SEATTLE – Amazon.com’s autumn sale for Prime subscribers kicked off on Tuesday with price-conscious shoppers mostly snapping up deals on low-cost kitchen gadgets and apparel rather than splurging on big-ticket items.
Customers spent an average of US$38 (S$52) during the event’s first eight hours, up 2 per cent from the same period in 2022, according to Attain, a research firm that harvests data from credit card transactions.
With shoppers skimping on their purchases, Amazon is monitoring customers’ browsing activity so that it can offer them customised deals later in the year-end season when they are prepared to spend more, said Attain chief executive Brian Mandelbaum.
Other retailers looking to take advantage of Amazon’s sale are doing much the same.
Consumers are grappling with stubbornly persistent inflation even as their debt obligations balloon and savings shrink.
The resumption of student loan payments, which were suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic, is also expected to weigh on spending.
US online sales in November and December will rise 4.8 per cent to US$222 billion, according to Adobe, beating 2022’s 3.5 per cent growth, but well below the pre-pandemic level of 13 per cent reached in 2019. Numerator, another research firm, said top-selling items so far during the sale include Amazon-branded batteries.
About 60 per cent of items sold cost less than US$20 while only 3 per cent were more than US$100, according to the firm, which culled data from 890 shoppers who placed 1,379 orders.
Amazon launched its Prime Day summer sale in 2015 to attract new subscribers, who pay US$139 a year for shipping discounts, video streaming and other benefits.
The event helps Amazon lock in shoppers before the holidays and deepen its relationship with existing customers by offering them exclusive deals on Amazon gadgets and other products.
The Seattle-based company added a second event in 2022, called Prime Early Access Sale, that saw shoppers largely shun pricey products and load up on discounted pantry items instead.
This year’s autumn sale has been renamed Prime Big Deal Days.
During the two-day period, total US online sales will reach US$8.1 billion, up 6.1 per cent from a year earlier, according to Adobe.
Consumers seem prepared to start their holiday spending early if the discounts are sufficiently compelling. Some 64 per cent of shoppers said they would begin shopping in October in 2023, up from 53 per cent a year ago, according to a survey conducted by RetailMeNot, which monitors online deals.
About 58 per cent of those surveyed said they will shop on Amazon’s Big Deal Days and planned to spend US$154, which is about US$100 less than what those surveyed planned to spend during the Prime Day sale in July.
“People are definitely out there looking,” RetailMeNot editor Kristin McGrath said. “How well these sales do, and how much people actually buy, remains to be determined.” BLOOMBERG
