As the retail landscape continues to evolve, events like Amazon Prime Day have become more than just shopping extravaganzas—they’ve transformed into strategic battlegrounds where retailers assert their market positions and brand identities. Prime Day 2024 was no exception, serving as a crucial moment for retailers to showcase their pricing prowess, customer loyalty programs, and category expertise.
In an era where consumer expectations for deals are at an all-time high, the impact of Prime Day extends far beyond Amazon’s ecosystem. Retailers like Walmart, known for its “everyday low prices,” Target with its emphasis on style and value, and Best Buy, the electronics specialist, have all adapted their strategies to compete. These companies didn’t just react to Prime Day; they proactively launched their own pre-emptive sales events, with Target Circle Week, Walmart July Deals and more, effectively extending the shopping bonanza and challenging Amazon’s dominance.
For Prime Day, we analyzed over 47,000 SKUs across major retailers and product categories to publish insights on Amazon’s pricing strategies as well as the performance of leading consumer brands. Here, we go further to delve into the discounts offered (or not offered) by Amazon’s competitors during Prime Day. Our analysis reveals that some retailers chose to compete on price during the sale for certain categories, while others did not.
Below, we highlight our findings for each product category. The Absolute Discount is the total discount offered by each retailer during Prime Day compared to the MSRP. These are the discounts consumers are familiar with, displayed on retail websites prominently during sale events. The Additional Discount, on the other hand, is the reduction in price during Prime Day compared to the week prior to the sale, revealing the level of price markdowns by the retailer specific to a sale event.
Consumer Electronics
In the Consumer Electronics category, Best Buy stood out as a strong competitor, offering an Additional Discount of 5.9%—the highest among all competitors analyzed. This is unsurprising, as Best Buy is well-known for its focus on consumer electronics and is likely aiming to reinforce its reputation for offering attractive deals in order to maintain its strong consumer perception in the category.
Walmart was a close second with a 4.3% Additional Discount while Target reduced its prices by only 2% during the sale.
Apparel
In the Apparel category, Walmart’s Additional Discount was 3.1%, demonstrating its willingness to be priced competitively on a small portion of its assortment during the sale, without compromising much on margins.
Target, on the other hand, opted out of competing with Amazon on price during the sale, choosing instead to maintain its Absolute Discount level of around 11%.
Home & Furniture
The Home & Furniture category showcased diverse strategies from retailers. Specialty furniture retailers such as Overstock and Home Depot provided Additional Discounts of 3.9% and 2.5%, respectively, compared to Amazon’s 6.9%. This indicates a clear intent to maintain market share and remain top-of-mind for consumers despite Amazon’s competitive pricing.
Although Target didn’t significantly lower its prices during the sale, its Absolute Discount remains substantial at 18.9%. This suggests that Target’s markdowns were already steep before the event, which could explain the lack of further reductions during the sale.
Health & Beauty
The Health & Beauty category saw minimal participation from Amazon’s competitors, with the exception of Sephora, which reduced prices by 3.7% during Prime Day.
Ulta Beauty chose not to adjust its prices, likely reflecting its strategy to uphold a premium brand image. Walmart, on the other hand, offered a modest Additional Discount of 2% on select items. Given Walmart’s generally affordable product range, its total discount remained relatively low, around 3.5%.
In Conclusion
During Prime Day, Walmart was the only major retailer that made an effort to compete, albeit modestly. Target, on the other hand, largely chose not to offer any additional markdowns. However, several category-specific retailers, such as Best Buy in Consumer Electronics, Overstock and Home Depot in Furniture, and Sephora in Health & Beauty, aimed to retain market share by providing notable discounts.
What this means for consumers is that even on Amazon’s Prime Day, it’s not a bad idea to compshop to identify the best deal.
For retailers, the key takeaway is the importance of quickly analyzing competitor pricing and making agile, data-driven decisions to improve both revenues and margins. By utilizing advanced pricing intelligence solutions like DataWeave, retailers can optimize their discount strategies, better navigate pricing complexities, and drive revenue growth — all while staying prepared for major shopping events and beyond.
As the dust settles on Amazon’s 8th Prime Day extravaganza in India, held on July 20-21, 2024, the eCommerce giant has once again shattered records. This year’s event saw unprecedented engagement, with 24% more Prime members participating compared to 2023, marking the highest-ever Prime member involvement in the sale’s history.
At DataWeave, we’ve conducted an extensive analysis of this landmark event, examining over 47,000 SKUs across major categories for Flipkart and Amazon to uncover compelling insights into pricing strategies, competitive positioning, and emerging trends in the Indian eCommerce space. This follows our comprehensive analysis of Prime Day in the USA across categories and brands, which readers can explore for a global perspective on Amazon’s strategies.
Key Highlights:
Tier-2 Cities Drive Growth: This year’s exponential growth was notably fueled by orders from tier-2 cities, highlighting the expanding reach of eCommerce in India.
Swift Deliveries: Most Prime members’ orders from metros were delivered the same day or the next, while tier-2 cities saw deliveries in less than 2 days, highlighting the importance of delivery time when it comes to purchase decisions.
Brand Participation: Over 450 top Indian and global brands participated, including Intel, Samsung, OnePlus, and Puma, alongside 3,200 new product launches from small and medium Indian businesses. This highlights Amazon’s policy to promote small, local businesses globally in 2024.
Premium Products in Demand: Despite modest discounts across electronics and similar offerings, consumers chose to purchase premium products during Prime Day. With financial flexibility and no-cost EMI options, Indian consumers, especially Gen Z and millennials, are now ready to invest in premium products and experiences.
Our analysis focused on both the Additional Discounts offered during Prime Day (calculated relative to prices the week prior to the event), highlighting the event’s genuine benefits, and the Absolute Discounts offered during Prime Day, representing the total markdown relative to the MRP.
Cross-Category Discount Strategy
Our analysis this year reveals that the Consumer Electronics category saw the highest Absolute Discounts with an average of 48.9%, closely followed by Apparel at 46.9%. The Health & Beauty category had the lowest Absolute Discount at 32.1%.
However, Amazon offered the highest Additional Discount in Health & Beauty at 9.3%. Electronics and Apparel had additional discounts of 8.6% and 7.7% respectively.
Overall, Flipkart chose to not compete aggressively with Amazon during Prime Day this year. Only in Electronics did Flipkart offer an additional discount of 3.2% during the sale. Price changes in Apparel and Health & Beauty were negligible.
Category Deep Dive
Consumer Electronics
In Electronics, Earbuds (14.7%) and Wireless Headphones (12.5%) saw the highest Additional Discounts on Amazon, likely due to high demand for personal audio devices. Smartwatches followed closely at 12.5%, indicating a strong push in the wearable technology sector.
Larger electronic appliances like TVs saw more modest Additional Discounts (5.2%), despite a significant Absolute Discount (42.3%).
Smartphones, interestingly, had the lowest Additional Discount (2.8%) among the subcategories, potentially due to their already competitive pricing or brand-specific strategies.
Brand-level Insights in Consumer Electronics
During the sale event, Soundcore (headphone and earphone brand from Anker) led with the highest Additional Discount of 10.3%, followed closely by OnePlus at 9.3%. These brands clearly leveraged Prime Day to drive sales and potentially gain market share.
Sennheiser and Sony also offered significant additional discounts, indicating aggressive promotional strategies during the event.
Notably, some well-known brands like Apple and HP offered more conservative discounts, possibly due to their established market positions or differing promotional strategies.
Despite modest discounts though, Amazon revealed that the iPhone 13 and OnePlus 12R were among the top premium smartphones customers bought this Prime Day. Prime members shopped from top brands such as LG, IFB, Bosch, and Haier and upgraded to premium appliances through affordability options of no cost EMI, Bank discounts and exchange offers, claims Amazon.
These learnings offer valuable insight into the mindset of the modern Indian consumer, who is ready to purchase premium products. Brands can leverage more detailed market intelligence to drive their positioning in India.
Share of Search Analysis
The Share of Search (SoS) for a brand represents the number of its products in the top 20 search results for relevant search keywords on Amazon, relative to that of its competitors. It provides insights into a brand’s visibility during the sale event.
HP saw the most significant improvement in its Share of Search during Prime Day, gaining 9.2%, with strong growth in both organic (7.5%) and sponsored (1.7%) listings. LG also made substantial gains of 8.2% and 5.3% respectively. Both brands offered significant markdowns on laptops and accessories.
Surprisingly, some popular brands like Apple (-0.6%) and Acer (-1.0%) experienced slight decreases in their SoS. Lenovo notably lost 7.2% of its visibility share, with a significant decline in organic listings (-7.6%). Samsung maintained its strong position with an increase in SoS (3.7%).
Key Takeaways:
While some brands like Soundcore and OnePlus used aggressive discounting to drive sales, others like HP and LG focused on improving their search visibility. The data suggests that a combination of attractive discounts and improved search visibility was key to success during the event. Brands that managed to balance these factors effectively, like HP and Samsung, seemed to perform particularly well. Interestingly, some brands with lower discounts (like HP) still managed to significantly increase their SoS, indicating that factors beyond pricing played a role in visibility during the event.
Apparel
Within the subcategories analyzed, Women’s Shoes (13.4%) and Men’s Shoes (11.6%) saw the highest Additional Discounts on Amazon, indicating a strong focus on footwear during the event. Men’s Shirts followed closely at 11.1%
Women’s Tops had a more modest Additional Discount of 7.9% despite a high Absolute Discount before the event. Similarly, Women’s Dresses showed substantial Additional Discounts (10.4%).
Swimwear for both men and women saw low Additional Discounts (3.7% and 3.0% respectively). Innerwear categories for both men and women had more conservative discounts, with Men’s Innerwear showing the lowest Absolute Discount (19.9%) among all subcategories.
Brand-level Insights in Apparel
During the sale event, Sangani (innerwear brand) led with the highest Additional Discount of 41%, followed by Louis Philippe at 25%. These brands clearly leveraged Prime Day to drive sales and gain market share.
Puma offered the highest Absolute Discount at 60% with a significant Additional Discount of 20%, indicating a consistently aggressive promotional strategy. Chromozome (men’s innerwear brand) and Bacca Bucci (homegrown shoe brand of Shark Tank India fame) also offered substantial Absolute Discounts (57% and 56% respectively), but their Additional Discounts varied significantly (16% and 6% respectively).
Again, some well-known brands like Adidas, and Pepe Jeans offered more moderate Additional Discounts, possibly due to their established market positions.
Share of Search Analysis
Biba (women’s ethnic wear brand) saw the most significant improvement in its SoS, gaining 3.60%, entirely through investments in sponsored listings. Allen Solly and New Balance (shoe brand) also made substantial gains of 3.3% and 3.2% respectively.
Surprisingly, some popular brands like Louis Philippe (-2.00%) and Sangani (-2.10%) experienced decreases in their SoS. Louis Philippe lost its share due to a roll back of its sponsored listings, while Sangini lost ground organically.
Key Takeaways:
While some brands like Sangani and Louis Philippe used aggressive discounting to drive sales, others like Biba and Allen Solly focused on improving their search visibility through sponsored listings.
Some brands with high discounts (like Sangani) saw a decrease in SoS, while others with more modest discounts (like Biba) significantly increased their visibility. This indicates that factors beyond pricing played a crucial role in brand performance during the event.
The significant use of sponsored listings by some brands highlights the importance of paid advertising in gaining visibility during competitive events like Prime Day.
Health & Beauty
Health & Beauty emerged as a standout category during Amazon Prime Day India 2024, with significant discounts and competitive strategies at play.
Within the subcategories we analyzed, Moisturizer (11.9%) and Sunscreen (11.8%) saw the highest additional price reductions on Amazon, likely due to seasonal demand during Prime Days. Make-up followed closely at 10.6%.
Electric Toothbrushes had the highest Absolute Discount at 47.1%, but a lower Additional Discount of 6.0%, highlighting that these products were already significantly discounted before the event. Similarly, Beard Care products showed high Absolute Discounts (43.7%) but lower Additional Discounts (5.7%) during Prime Day.
Everyday essentials like Toothpaste saw more modest discounts (19.9% Absolute, 8.4% Additional), reflecting steady demand for these products.
Brand-level Insights in Health & Beauty
Vaseline led with the highest Additional Discount of 13.1%, followed by Maybelline at 9.5%. These brands clearly leveraged Prime Day to drive sales and potentially gain market share.
Honest Amish (beard care brand) and Nivea also offered substantial Absolute Discounts (15.6% and 8.2% respectively), but their Additional Discounts were lower, indicating pre-existing promotional strategies.
Once again, some well-known brands like Colgate, Dove, and Neutrogena offered more conservative discounts, possibly due to their established market positions or differing promotional strategies.
Share of Search Analysis
Maybelline saw the most significant improvement, gaining 5.6% in SoS, all through organic listings. The brand has been aggressively increasing market share with several new product launches and influencer campaigns. Nivea and Vaseline also made substantial gains of 5.2% and 3.8% respectively.
In this category as well, some popular brands like Dove (-0.4%), Pond’s (-0.8%), and Honest Amish (-0.8%) experienced slight decreases in their SoS. Parodontax (toothpaste brand) notably lost 1.3% SoS, with most of the decline in sponsored listings. Colgate maintained its strong position with a slight increase in SoS (0.2%), reflecting its dominant market presence.
Key Takeaways:
While some brands like Vaseline and Maybelline used aggressive discounting and improved visibility to drive sales, others like Colgate and Dove relied more on their established market positions.
None of the brands made any significant strides in sponsored listings, revealing that brands in this category are not yet fully leveraging retail media to help manage and boost their visibility on online marketplaces.
Final Thoughts
Amazon Prime Day 2024 has redefined the eCommerce landscape in India, yet again, showcasing diverse strategies employed by brands to maximize their impact. By understanding and leveraging these insights, brands and retailers can better navigate future sales events, optimizing their eCommerce strategies to achieve sustained growth and success.
Stay tuned to our blog for more in-depth analyses of brand and retailer performance across various retail events.
Reach out to us today to learn how you can leverage data-driven insights to optimize your eCommerce strategy.
Amazon Prime Day 2024 saw U.S. shoppers spending a staggering $14.2 billion online during the two-day event—an 11% increase from last year. This surge in spending reflects a significant shift in consumer behavior and presents a wealth of insights for brands and retailers alike.
Unlike last year’s focus on essentials, Prime Day 2024 saw Americans enthusiastically embracing both necessities and discretionary purchases. The Consumer Electronics and Health & Beauty categories, for example, experienced a notable uptick in interest, driven by major retailers slashing prices across CPG and Grocery segments, amid other reasons. Check out our first article in the Prime Day series 2024, analyzing retail insights across categories during the event.
This year, small businesses gained unprecedented visibility on Amazon, pushing relatively new brands into visibility.
At DataWeave, we recognize the critical importance of understanding these market dynamics for brands navigating the competitive eCommerce landscape. To provide actionable insights, we conducted an extensive analysis of over 47,000 SKUs across key categories before and during Amazon during Prime Day 2024. Our study delves into:
Pricing strategies: How did brands adjust their discounts to capitalize on the Prime Day frenzy?
Share of Search: Which brands achieved the highest visibility for major search keywords?
Dive into these insights below to uncover how brands performed during Amazon Prime Day 2024, and learn how you can leverage these findings to enhance your brand’s digital shelf performance.
Our Findings
Most brands offered substantial discounts before Prime Day, then added smaller discounts during the event. This strategy creates a perception of value while still allowing room for Prime Day-specific deals. To understand the real value offered by brands, we conducted an extensive analysis of brand performance, examining both pricing strategies and visibility on the platform. Our approach focuses on two key metrics:
Discounts: We analyzed both the Absolute Discount (total markdown relative to MSRP a week before Prime Day) and the Additional Discount (the price reduction during Prime Day compared to the week before).
Share of Search (SoS): We examined the visibility of brands in the top 20 search results. We also separately tracked this metric for organic and sponsored search results.
Let’s dive into the category and brand specific insights:
Consumer Electronics
Once again, in 2024, the Consumer Electronics category dominated discounts. Amazon’s own brands lead with the highest average Absolute Discount (44.2%) and a significant Additional Discount (12.5%), showcasing its aggressive push for Prime Day.
In a surprising twist, Amazon’s homepage wasn’t dominated by its own brands. Instead, tech giants like Apple and Samsung took centre stage. Despite this, Amazon’s own brands offered significant discounts across electronics products, including Amazon Kindle, Fire TVs, Fire TV Sticks, Echo Dot, and more, aiming to capture market share via markdowns.
Soundcore (earphone audio products brand) offered the highest discount during Prime Day, at 30.10%. Other headphone, earbuds, and wireless headphone brands including Sony, Beats, JBL, and more also offered significant discounts.
Premium brands like Apple (17.90% Absolute, 9.00% Additional) and Bose (23.10% Absolute, 16.00% Additional) offered relatively modest discounts, aligning with their brand positioning, but also taking advantage of the Prime Day frenzy.
Share of Search Insights in Consumer Electronics
JBL emerged as the standout performer, with the most significant increase in SoS, jumping from 14.3% pre-event to 25.8% during Prime Day, driven entirely by organic growth. Beats also saw a remarkable rise, increasing from 2.8% to 12.8%, again through organic listings only. Samsung maintained its strong presence, growing from 18.6% to 26.8%, with most of its growth influenced by increased ad spend.
Apple, despite already having a high pre-event SoS, managed to increase its share further from 23.0% to 31.0%, with some contribution via sponsored ads. LG saw a substantial increase from 1.3% to 6.9%, primarily through sponsored listings, opting for an inorganic approach to drive visibility during the sale.
Amazon and its AmazonBasics brand both saw notable increases in SoS, relying solely on organic growth. This is, of course, not surprising since Amazon controls its organic ranking algorithm.
Interestingly, some brands experienced decreases in SoS. Sony, Motorola, and Hisense all saw reductions in their share, with Hisense’s decline coming entirely from a reduction in sponsored listings.
Key Takeaway: Prime Day 2024 saw a significant reshuffling of brand visibility in the Consumer Electronics category. While some established brands like JBL, Beats, Samsung, and Apple strengthened their positions through a mix of organic and sponsored growth, others faced increased competition for consumer attention. The event highlighted the importance of a balanced approach to visibility, with successful brands leveraging both organic search optimization and strategic use of sponsored listings to maximize their presence during this high-traffic period.
Apparel
In the Apparel category, Adidas led with the highest Absolute Discount (27.2%) and a significant Additional Discount (9.8%). Value brands like Hanes (innerwear brand) and Anrabess offered substantial discounts, while Amazon Essentials maintained high discounts across the board (16.5% Absolute, 15.3% Additional).
Some brands like Cupshe (swimwear and vacation apparel brand) offered relatively lower additional markdowns. Meanwhile CRZ Yoga (athleisure brand) did not offer additional markdowns on Prime Day.
Share of Search Insights in Apparel
Gildan (activewear brand) emerged as the top performer in terms of SoS growth, increasing from 8.1% pre-event to 12.1% during Prime Day, driven entirely by organic growth. CRZ Yoga (an athleisure apparel brand) and Dokotoo (women’s casualwear brand) also saw significant increases in their SoS, rising by 2.8 and 2.3 percentage points respectively, again through organic listings only.
Amazon Essentials continued to perform well, increasing its visibility from 7.0% to 9.1%, aligning with its competitive pricing strategy. Coofandy also saw a notable increase, growing from 7.8% to 9.9%.
Interestingly, some brands that were previously highlighted for growth actually experienced decreases in SoS. Automet (clothing & accessories brand) saw a slight decline from 12.5% to 12.1%, while Anrabess (women’s fashion brand) dropped from 15.8% to 14.5%. Cupshe (swimwear brand) experienced the most significant decrease, falling from 10.6% to 5.5%.
Adidas, despite leading in discounts, saw only a modest increase in SoS from 7.0% to 8.0%. Notably, none of the brands visible in the top search results utilized sponsored listings, with all changes in SoS coming from organic growth or decline. This indicates a lack of maturity in this category in leveraging retail media.
Key Takeaway: Prime Day 2024 in the apparel category showcased the importance of organic search optimization. While some brands like Gildan and CRZ Yoga significantly improved their visibility, others faced challenges in maintaining their pre-event positions. The absence of sponsored listings across all brands highlights a unique dynamic in the apparel category, where organic search performance appears to be the primary driver of visibility during high-traffic events like Prime Day.
This suggests that Apparel brands may need to focus more on SEO strategies and organic content optimization to maximize their presence during major shopping events, rather than relying on paid promotions. On the other hand, smartly leveraging retail media to boost visibility can give apparel brands a competitive edge.
Health & Beauty
The Health & Beauty category this year got a push thanks to Amazon’s subscription offering. Prime members who subscribed for regular usage products like toothpaste and health aids or medicines availed higher discounts.
Amid Health & Beauty brands, Neutrogena led with the highest Absolute Discount (32.7%) and a significant Additional Discount (11.7%). Sun Bum moisturizers & sunscreen (23.3%) and Viking Revolution (23.1%) offered the highest Additional Discounts, indicating a strong Prime Day focus.
Premium brands like L’Oreal Paris and Philips Sonicare offered moderate discounts, balancing promotions with their intended brand image.
Share of Search Insights in Health & Beauty
Banana Boat (sunscreen brand) emerged as the standout performer, seeing the largest increase in SoS from 6.5% to 13.4%, achieved entirely through organic growth. Nyx Professional Makeup also saw a significant jump, rising from 3.9% to 8.9%, again solely through organic listings.
Contrary to previous analysis, e.l.f. actually experienced substantial growth, increasing from 9.0% to 13.1% SoS, with a strong focus on organic growth (4.4%) slightly offset by a minor decrease in sponsored listings (-0.2%).
Neutrogena maintained its strong performance, aligning with its aggressive discounting strategy, as its SoS increased from 14.6% to 18.5% through organic growth. Colgate also saw a notable increase from 11.0% to 13.7% SoS.
Interestingly, some brands employed a mixed strategy. Dove and Garnier saw overall increases in SoS, but achieved this through different means. Dove relied heavily on sponsored growth, while Garnier offset a decrease in organic listings with strong sponsored content growth.
Contrary to previous observations, Oral-B experienced a decrease in SoS from 18.5% to 15.3%, entirely in organic listings. Without any additional spend on sponsored listings to compensate, it lost significant ground in its visibility. Other brands facing significant declines include Tresemme, OGX, Philips Sonicare, and most notably, Viking Revolution, which dropped from 17.2% to 10.7% in its SoS.
Key Takeaway: The Health & Beauty category during Prime Day 2024 showcased a diverse range of strategies and outcomes. While some brands like Banana Boat and Nyx Professional Makeup achieved significant visibility gains through organic growth, others like Dove and Garnier relied more on sponsored content.
The success of e.l.f. and Neutrogena in aligning discounting strategies with increased visibility stands in contrast to the challenges faced by previously strong performers like Oral-B and Viking Revolution. This varied landscape shows the fierce competition in the category and the need for brands to employ multi-faceted strategies that balance organic optimization, sponsored content, and competitive pricing to succeed in high-stakes events like Prime Day.
Brand Strategies and Future Implications
Our analysis reveals several key trends:
Brand Positioning Matters: Premium brands like Apple and Bose maintained their positioning with modest discounts, while value-oriented brands like Soundcore and Hanes offered deeper cuts to attract price-sensitive shoppers.
Visibility vs. Discounting: Some brands, particularly in the Consumer Electronics category, prioritized increasing their visibility (Share of Search) over offering steep discounts. This strategy suggests a focus on long-term visibility and brand perception rather than short-term sales boosts.
Category-Specific Approaches: Apparel brands uniquely relied on organic search visibility, eschewing sponsored listings entirely. In contrast, several Health & Beauty brands leveraged sponsored content significantly to boost their presence.
Emerging Brand Opportunities: Lesser-known brands, especially in the Apparel and Health & Beauty categories, used Prime Day as a launchpad to increase their visibility, often outpacing established names in Share of Search growth.
Amazon’s Dual Strategy: As both a platform and a brand, Amazon showcased its ability to offer deep discounts on its own products while also providing a stage for other brands to shine.
Stay tuned to our blog for more in-depth analyses of brand and retailer performance and strategies across various retail events. Reach out to us today to learn how you can leverage data-driven insights to optimize your brand’s eCommerce strategy and performance.
Amazon Prime Day 2024 has once again shattered records, with more items sold during the two-day event than any previous Prime Day. Prime members worldwide saved billions across all categories, while independent sellers moved an impressive 200 million items.
At DataWeave, we conducted an extensive analysis of the discounts offered by Amazon across major categories. By examining over 47,000 SKUs, we’ve uncovered compelling insights into pricing strategies, competitive positioning, and emerging trends in the eCommerce space.
Since products on Amazon and other eCommerce websites are often sold at discounts even on normal days not linked to a sale event, we delved into the real value that Prime Day offers to shoppers by focusing on price reductions or the Additional Discount during the sale compared to the week before. As a result, our approach highlights the genuine benefits of the event for shoppers who count on lower prices during the sale. At the same time, our report also includes the Absolute Discounts offered during Prime Day, which represents the total markdown relative to the MSRP.
Amazon’s Cross-Category Discount Strategy
Our analysis reveals that the Electronics category saw the highest discounts with an average absolute discount of 20.4% and additional discounts on Prime Day amounting to 10.4%. Meanwhile the Home & Furniture had the lowest discount at 13.1%.
The Health & Beauty category saw significant additional discounts during Prime Day, at 9.26%. The Apparel category offered attractive absolute (16.10%) and additional (8.90%) discounts.
Category Deep Dive
Consumer Electronics
Still the star of the show, the electronics category saw the highest markdowns this Prime Day with absolute discounts at 20.40% and across 14.61% of their inventory.
Across Electronics subcategories, Earbuds had the highest markdowns at 34.80%, followed closely by Wireless Headphones at 30.60% and Headphones at 29.00%, with steep additional discounts during Prime Day as well. Apple AirPods Pro, for example, retailed at $168 (down from $249) at a 32% discount.
Meanwhile, smartphones had the lowest markdowns at 9.30%, followed by Laptops at 10.50%. Laptops also had the lowest additional discount during Prime Day at just 1.28%, significantly lower than other subcategories. Speakers (20.80%), Drones (19.10%), and Smartwatches (25.00%) offered moderate to high markdowns.
Notably, all Amazon products including Kindle, Echo, Echo Earbuds, Alexa, Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire Tablets, were aggressively discounted upwards of 30% this Prime Day. These products also came with the label “Climate Pledge Friendly.”
These aspects indicate Amazon’s push to promote its own ecosystem of products to the top, as well as cater to changing consumer preferences.
Apparel
Discounts offered this Prime Day increased from 13.2% in 2023 to 16.1% in 2024.
Amid apparel subcategories, Amazon appears to be pushing Women’s apparel categories more aggressively, particularly in Tops, Shoes, and Athleisure.
Women’s Shoes lead with the highest discounts at 26.50%, followed by Women’s Tops at 22.50% and Men’s Shoes at 22.80%. Women’s Tops also maintained the highest additional discount at 15.27%, followed by Women’s Athleisure at 13.03% and Men’s Swimwear at 12.44%.
Similar to 2023, Men’s Innerwear offered significantly lower discounts, with only 1% absolute discount and 0.72% additional discount. Women’s Innerwear also shows low discounts at 3.20% absolute and 2.23% additional.
Health & Beauty
Amid health & beauty subcategories, Moisturizes witnessed the highest markdowns at 20.10%, followed by Make Up at 18.90%. The Moisturizer subcategory also offers highest additional discounts at 12.20%, followed closely by Sunscreen at 10.25% and Beard Care at 10.22%.
The Toothpaste subcategory has the lowest discounts, at 10.90%. The lower discounts on everyday essentials like this might indicate a steady demand or an attempt to maintain margins on frequently purchased items.
Most Health & Beauty subcategories fall in the 15-18% range for actual discounts and 8-10% range for additional discounts. Electric Toothbrush (16.90% actual, 9.91% additional) and Shampoo (16.50% actual, 8.78% additional) represent the middle of the pack. There were a few highly attractive deals though, such as the Philips Sonicare toothbrush retailing at $122.96 (down from $199.99), with a 39% discount.
Amazon also offered significant discounts on Open Box products (products that are returned, but unused, out of mint condition boxes) to Prime members.
Home & Furniture
This category saw the lowest discounts for this Prime Day event at 13.1%. Across subcategories, Rugs lead with the highest average discount at 21.50%, closely followed by Luggage at 20.90%. Amazon seems to be pushing decorative and organizational items (Rugs, Bookcases) more aggressively, possibly due to higher margins. Rugs also stood out as the subcategory with the highest additional discount of 11.54%.
Sofas have the lowest additional discount at 2.76%, followed by Dining Tables at 3.21%. Items like Cabinets (15.80% absolute, 6.66% additional) and Coffee Tables (14.40% absolute, 6.25% additional) represent the middle range of discounts.
Watch Out For More
As the holiday season approaches, it’s clear that the retail landscape continues to evolve. While Amazon remains a formidable force, there are opportunities for savvy competitors to carve out their niches and attract deal-hungry shoppers. By analyzing these trends and adjusting strategies accordingly, retailers can position themselves for success in the high-stakes world of summer sales events.
Stay tuned to our blog for more insights on how Amazon’s competitors reacted to Prime Day, and how leading brands across categories fared in terms of their pricing and their visibility during the sale event. Reach out to us today to learn more.
Amazon reported a record-breaking Prime Day this July, marking it as the biggest sales event in the company’s history. So when the eCommerce giant announced the Prime Big Deal Days this fall, we were curious to find out how big a deal it really is.
The Prime Big Deal Days, similar in magnitude to the Summer Prime Day, promised to present substantial savings across a diverse range of categories, including electronics, toys, home, fashion, beauty, and Amazon products.
However, for a shopper, an important question is: Does the Prime Big Deal Days in October offer lower prices than Amazon’s mega Prime Day event in July?
To answer this question, we turned our data aggregation and analysis platform to focus on these two sale events and analyzed which event offered better deals across key categories and brands.
TL;DR: Surprisingly, the Prime Big Deal Days in October offered, on average, 2.02% higher discounts than its counterpart event in July.
Read on for details on how we went about our analysis and how discounts vary across categories, sub-categories, and brands.
Our Methodology
We tracked the prices and discounts of a large sample of products during both Prime Day events. The following are some relevant details about our sample:
Number of products analyzed: 1500+
Categories: Apparel, Consumer Electronics, Home & Furniture, Health & Beauty
Prime Day Sale Analysis: 11-12 July 2023
Prime Big Deal Days Analysis: 10-11 Oct 2023
Website: Amazon.com
Our analysis focused on the differences in the prices and discount levels of products between the two sale events.
Our Key Findings
The average discount during the Prime Big Deal Days in October was 29.44%, which was 2.02% higher than the average discount during the Prime Day sale in July (27.42%). Interestingly, the October event offered better deals across each product category analyzed, albeit at slightly varying levels.
By offering deeper discounts in October, Amazon may have aimed to encourage early holiday shopping, thereby capturing a larger share of the consumer wallet before competitors intensify their promotional activities closer to the festive season.
As other retailers and online marketplaces gear up for their own holiday promotional events, Amazon’s decision to provide heightened discounts in October could serve as a preemptive move to secure customer loyalty and drive sales momentum before the onset of the peak shopping period.
Additionally, Amazon’s strategic push to amplify the visibility of its diverse product offerings, including exclusive launches and partnerships during the October event might have contributed to the higher discounts.
Next, let’s take a closer look at each product category.
Apparel
During October’s Prime Big Deal Days, the Apparel category experienced a notable uptick, boasting a 2.29% increase in discounts compared to the earlier Prime Day event in July.
In the detailed assessment of Apparel sub-categories, Men’s and Women’s Swimwear, alongside Men’s Shoes, Innerwear, and Athleisure, emerged as the segments showcasing the most substantial average discounts during October. Fall also brought about more affordable prices for Women’s Innerwear and Men’s Shirts. However, Women’s Athleisure, Dresses, and Tops displayed diminished average discounts during this Prime Big Deal Days event.
Delving into brand-specific analyses revealed intriguing trends. Athleisure brands such as Ibkul, Esprlia, and Ryka notably escalated their discounts in October after minimal markdowns during the Summer Prime Day sale.
Steve Madden, witnessing heightened discounts in October, hinted at a growing demand for boots and footwear in the Autumn and Winter seasons. For instance, the Steve Madden Men’s Fenta Fashion Sneaker was priced at $46 during the Summer Prime Day, and only at $35 during the Prime Big Deal Days in October.
Conversely, brands like PGA Tour, Land’s End, Roxy, and Anrabess offered more substantial discounts during the Summer compared to the October event.
Consumer Electronics
The Consumer Electronics segment during October’s Prime Big Deal Days showcased an average price decrease of 1.98% compared to the Prime Day event in July.
Nearly all scrutinized subcategories experienced heightened discounts during the Fall Prime Big Deal Days in October. Tablets, Speakers, Drones, and Smartwatches notably presented higher discounts of 4.06%, 3.51%, 2.99%, and 2.69%, respectively, in October. However, more enticing deals were found on Earbuds and TVs during July’s event.
Examining consumer electronics brands, Google stood out by offering the most compelling deals in October, boasting an average discount of 23.35%, marking an 8.94% increase from the Summer Prime Days’ 14.41%. Psier, Sony, and OnePlus also featured significantly reduced prices during the Fall. For example, the OnePlus 10 Pro | 8GB+128GB was $500 during the sale in July and only $440 during the Prime Big Deal Days in October.
Conversely, prominent brands such as Bose, Sennheiser, Samsung, LG, and Asus opted to offer heavier discounts in July. Notably, the Samsung All-in-One Soundbar w/Dolby 5.1 was priced at $218 in October but only $168 in July.
Home & Furniture
During October’s Prime Big Deal Days, the Home & Furniture category experienced a notable 1.59% increase in average discounts compared to the Prime Day event held in July.
Notably, Entertainment Units, Rugs, and Coffee Tables emerged as standout sub-categories that were more attractively priced in October, exhibiting price differences of 7.73%, 5.33%, and 4.80%, respectively.
Interestingly, among the scrutinized sub-categories, only Luggage showed a lower price during the Prime Day sale in July compared to the October event. This shift likely reflects evolving consumer demand as the holiday season approaches, with items like rugs and entertainment units becoming increasingly sought-after categories for purchase.
If you’re keen to explore how these trends vary across brands within this category, reach out to us for more insights.
Health & Beauty
During October’s Prime Big Deal Days, the Health & Beauty category showcased products at an average of 1.99% lower prices compared to the Prime Day event held in July.
Our analysis of Health & Beauty reveals that a majority of the subcategories presented higher discounts during the October Big Deal Days event. Essential items such as Toothpaste, Sunscreen, and Electric Toothbrushes notably stood out as significantly more affordable during the Fall event, reflecting not only consistent demand but also a seasonal emphasis on these products. For instance, the Oral B iO Series 3 Limited Edition Electric Toothbrush, priced at $140 during the summer Prime Days, was further discounted to $120 in the fall event.
Interestingly, Beard Care emerged as an exception, displaying higher discounts during the Prime Day sale in Summer compared to Fall’s Prime Big Deal Days.
Examining brands within the category, Babyganics, Thinkbaby, and Vaseline showcased substantial increases in average additional discounts during October’s Prime Big Deal Days.
Conversely, prominent brands like Maybelline, Neutrogena, and Cetaphil offered lower discounts during the fall event.
Competitive Insights to Drive Optimized Sale Event Pricing
At DataWeave, we understand the pivotal role of competitive pricing insights in empowering retailers and brands to gain a competitive edge, especially during significant events like Prime Day. Our commitment lies in providing retailers with precise and extensive competitor price tracking on a large scale. This empowers them to devise impactful pricing strategies and consistently uphold a competitive stance in the market. To learn more about how this can be done, talk to us today!
Amazon’s India Prime Day 2023 shattered previous records with a peak of 22,190 orders received in a minute. An important aspect of Amazon’s India Prime Day was the benefits it offers to Prime Members. Thousands of sellers, brands, and bank partners collaborated to help Prime members save a staggering sum of over Rs. 300 Crores. The 2 day (July 15-16) event even witnessed strong growth in Prime membership, with 14% more members shopping than last year’s Prime Day event. 45,000+ new products were launched by over 400+ top Indian and global brands.
However, our analysis reveals that Amazon was able to make a huge splash despite adopting a relatively modest discounting strategy for the event.
Pricing and Discounts on Prime Day 2023
While Prime Day is Amazon’s showstopper, bringing huge benefits to partner brands and sellers, it’s interesting to also see how Flipkart responded to such a massive sale by its biggest competitor. Therefore, we leveraged our proprietary data aggregation and analysis platform to analyze the prices and discounts of Amazon and Flipkart across key product categories – Apparel, Home & Furniture, Consumer Electronics, and Health & Beauty – during Prime Day.
Since products on Amazon and other eCommerce websites are often sold at discounts even on normal days not linked to a sale event, we delved into the real value that Prime Day offers to shoppers by focusing on price reductions or additional discounts during the sale compared to the week before. As a result, our approach highlights the genuine benefits of the event for shoppers who count on lower prices during the sale.
Research Methodology
For our analysis, we tracked the prices of a large number of products across Amazon and Flipkart during Prime Day as well as the week prior to the event. The details of our sample are mentioned below:
Number of SKUs: 85,000+
Retailers: Amazon, Flipkart
Categories: Apparel, Home & Furniture, Consumer Electronics, Health & Beauty
Pre-event Analysis:10-14 July 2023
Prime Day Analysis: 15-16 July 2023
Our Findings
Based on our analysis, Prime Day showcased relatively higher price reductions in the Health and Beauty category, offering an average additional discount of 5.3%. In comparison, the Apparel category had lower discounts at 4.90%, followed by the Home & Furniture category at 2.50% during the sale event.
The Consumer Electronics category, known for attractive prices during sale events, featured only 0.9% price reductions. This is due to the fact that the category was already being sold at a very high average discount of around 44.8% the week prior to Prime Day.
Below, we delve deeper into our analysis of each category to better understand how price reductions were distributed across key subcategories on Amazon. We also report on the degree to which Flipkart responded to Amazon’s pricing actions during the event.
Apparel
As Amazon grappled with heightened costs and reduced profit margins in apparel (like most other retailers), its average discount before Prime Day was already at 36.5%. Then, on Prime Day, Amazon’s apparel deals were tempered at around 4.9% average price reduction across 43.7% of its assortment.
Flipkart, on the other hand, offered only a modest additional discount of 1.8% across 17.7% of its Apparel assortment. It’s clear that while Flipkart took steps to compete against Amazon in this category, it was done to a lower extent on fewer products than Amazon.
Across all the apparel subcategories we analyzed, Men’s Shoes (11.6%), Women’s Shoes (9.5%), and Men’s Shirts (8.7%) were among the ones with the highest price reductions. On the other hand, Men’s and Women’s Swimwear (2.3%), Women’s Innerwear (2.9%), and Women’s Athleisure (3.3%) had conservative markdowns.
Pricing choices within different subcategories likely stemmed from a range of factors, such as inventory quantities, trends in demand, and the aim to harmonize competitive deals with the maintenance of viable profit margins. These decisions reflect Amazon’s attempt to cater to a consumer base that is particularly conscious of pricing.
Across all apparel subcategories, leading brands that offered the highest markdowns were Sweet Dreams (65.5%), Ketch (55.1%), Clarks (44.9%), and Kibo (38.4%). Meanwhile, Reebok and Adidas offered significant additional discounts at 26.3% and 24.9%, respectively, as well.
For brands, however, reducing prices is just one approach to entice shoppers. They must also guarantee their prominent presence and easy discoverability within Amazon’s search results. This significantly amplifies their potential to generate higher clicks and conversions. In our analysis, we monitored brands’ Share of Search across various frequently used search terms in addition to the discounts they provided. The Share of Search denotes the portion of a brand’s products within the top 20 search results for a specific search query.
Our data indicates that certain brands gained ground in their discoverability during Prime Day, while others fell behind. Van Heusen in Women’s Athleisure (30%), Campus in Men’s Shoes (50%), and Rovar’s (30%) in Women’s Swimwear among others, improved their Share of Search by significant levels during Prime Day.
On the other hand, brands like Sparkx in Men’s Shoes, Xyxx in Men’s Innerwear, WomanLikeU in Women’s Swimwear, and Adidas in Women’s Shoes lost around 40%-80% in their Share of Search during the event. This is likely to have impacted their sales volumes adversely.
Home & Furniture
The Home & Furniture industry faced challenges of reduced demand and overstocked inventory over the past year. Therefore, even before Prime Day, discounts offered in this category on Amazon averaged a staggering 45.3%. Consequently, on Amazon Prime Day, additional discounts averaged only 2.5% on Amazon, offered across 33.3% of its assortment. Flipkart opted, in effect, not to compete with Amazon in this category, offering a negligible additional discount of 0.8% across 14.70% of its assortment.
Of all the Home & Furniture subcategories we analyzed, Luggage (5.1%), Beds (3.9%), and Coffee Tables (3.1%) had high price reductions, while Rugs (0.6%), Bookcases (1.5%), and Washer/Dryers (1.2%) had lower markdowns. This highlights the difference in consumer preferences across geographies, with rugs being more discretionary in India but staple in the US.
The Home & Furniture category is not known for its brand loyalty among shoppers. Therefore, brands often rely on attractive pricing to gain shopper interest. This Prime Day, brands that offered the highest markdowns in this category include It Luggage (40%), Couch Culture (25.8%), Story@Home (23.3%), and Verage (21.2%).
In terms of Share of Search, Wudparadise in Entertainment Units gained the highest (50%). Solimo (an Amazon Brand) in Beds (40%), Sofas (30%), and Coffee Tables (10%) gained significant ground in its respective categories too. In contrast, About Space in Bookcases (-60%), Anika in Entertainment Units (-40%), and Sleepyhead in Mattresses (-40%) lost out on their discoverability in their respective categories during the event.
To gain a competitive edge during sale events like Prime Day, brands need to monitor their Share of Search closely, especially in categories like Home & Furniture with low brand loyalty.
Consumer Electronics
This Prime Day, five smartphones got sold every second with 70% of the demand coming from Tier 2 & 3 cities in India, largely comprising of foldable smartphones and newly launched smartphones (OnePlus Nord 3 5G, Samsung Galaxy M34 5G, Motorola Razr 40 Series, Realme Narzo 60 Series and iQOO Neo 7 Pro 5G). Multiple new products were launched this Prime Day, by brands such as OnePlus, iQOO, Realme Narzo, Samsung, Motorola, boAt, Sony, and more in India.
Despite the high demand and new product launches, Amazon’s price reductions in the Consumer Electronics category averaged only 0.9% across 27% of its assortment. Similar to what we observed in the Home & Furniture category, this can be attributed to the prevailing high average discount of 44.8% the week prior to Prime Day. Essentially, in Consumer Electronics, shoppers needn’t always wait till sale events like Prime Day to view the most attractive deals. Several are offered even during the days leading up to the sale.
Across subcategories, Earbuds (2.4%), Wireless Headphones (1.6%), and TVs (1.3%) received the highest price reductions due to their popularity and high sales volumes during sales events. On the other hand, Smartwatches (0.6%), Drones (0.4%), and Smartphones (0.3%) had lower markdowns.
In terms of price reductions across brands, Da Capo (52.6%), Muzen (33.3%), JLab (23.6%), and Earboss (21.5%) offered the most attractive deals in the Consumer Electronics category. Notably, Amazon Basics also offered modestly attractive deals (12.2%), highlighting Amazon’s strategy of promoting in-house brands.
The Consumer Electronics category has a loyal shopper base, but generic search keywords like earbuds, headphones, and tablets remain essential for attracting high-intent shoppers and increasing brand awareness. So when it comes to Share of Search, Noise in Smartwatches, Samsung in Smartphones and Tablets, and HP in Laptops, all made strong strides in building their discoverability on Amazon during Prime Day.
Xiaomi in Laptops, Ekko in Earbuds, OnePlus in Smartphones and Apple in Tablets, lost out to other brands during the sale.
Health & Beauty
Health & Beauty emerged as the top-performing category in terms of additional discounts during Prime Day in India. Our data shows that Amazon offered an average additional discount of 5.3% on almost half of its products (46.8%) in this category. Competing head to head with Amazon in this category, Flipkart offered 5.5% additional discounts across 35.8% of its assortment.
Within all the subcategories we analyzed, Sunscreen (7.5%), Make-Up (7.2%), Shampoo (6.6%), and Moisturiser (6.4%) saw the highest price reductions on Amazon. Conversely, staple items like Toothpaste (3.%) and Beardcare (3.6%) had lower markdowns.
During the sale event, brands like Sadhev (43.4%), Clear (41.1%), Teenilicious (40.4%), and Coal Clean Beauty (38.4%), offered the most attractive deals.
In terms of significant gains in Share of Search for brands, L’Oreal Paris in Shampoo and Conditioner led the pack along with Oracura in Electric toothbrushes and The Formularx in Moisturiser. Perfora in Toothpastes and Ustraa in Beardcare also gained more than 10% in their Share of Search during the sale event.
Other popular brands like Tresemme in Conditioners, and Swiss Beauty in Make-Up surprisingly had reduced visibility among the top search results for relevant subcategories.
Navigating the Competitive Landscape: How To Thrive During Sale Events
Amazon’s strategic pricing during Prime Day reflects a balance of profitability, inventory, and competition. Competitive pricing insights empower retailers to make informed decisions, optimize strategies, and thrive during high-stakes events. Prime Day serves as a crucial opportunity to drive sales, attract new customers, and boost loyalty. Therefore, monitoring competitor prices accurately, at scale, is essential for impactful pricing strategies.
For more insights on staying ahead during sale events, reach out to us today!
If you’d like to learn about Amazon’s pricing and discounts during Prime Day 2023 in the US, check out our analysis here.
Amazon’s Prime Day this year proved to be a record-breaking success, becoming the largest Prime Day event in the company’s history. Over the two-day extravaganza, shoppers in the US spent a staggering $12.7 billion, a 6.1% increase from the previous year. Amid inflationary pressures and supply chain disruptions, Amazon adopted a bold discounting strategy, offering steeper discounts compared to Prime Day 2022.
An interesting aspect of Amazon’s approach is their loyalty based offerings. In the weeks leading to Prime Day on July 11-12, members of the loyalty program were given access to “invite-only deals” where shoppers could request invites to specific products that they were looking to purchase on deals. Overall, Amazon’s pricing and discount strategies during Prime Day were carefully designed to create a buzz among shoppers, generate increased sales, and maintain a competitive advantage in the market.
While Prime Day is Amazon’s showstopper, it’s interesting to also see how other leading retailers respond to such a massive sale by their biggest competitor. Do they also lower their prices during the event, or are they happy to take a backseat? To answer these questions, we leveraged our proprietary data aggregation and analysis platform to analyze the prices and discounts of Amazon and its leading competitors across key product categories – Apparel, Home & Furniture, Consumer Electronics, and Health & Beauty – during Prime Day.
Since products on Amazon and other eCommerce websites are often sold at discounts even on normal days not linked to a sale event, we delved into the real value that Prime Day offers to shoppers by focusing on price reductions or additional discounts during the sale compared to the week before. As a result, our approach highlights the genuine benefits of the event for shoppers who count on lower prices during the sale.
Research & Methodology
For our analysis, we tracked the prices of a large number of products across several leading retailers during Prime Day as well as the week prior to the event. The details of our sample are mentioned below:
Number of SKUs: 110,000+
Websites: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Overstock, The Home Depot, Wayfair, Ulta Beauty, Sephora
Categories: Apparel, Home & Furniture, Electronics, Health & Beauty
Pre-event Analysis: 4-10 July 2023
Prime Day Analysis: 11-12 July 2023
Our Key Findings
Our data reveals that Amazon’s price reductions were most aggressive in the Consumer Electronics category, with an average price reduction of 10.4% on Prime Day, due to the category’s popularity and high demand.
The Health & Beauty (6.7%), Apparel (5.9%), and Home & Furniture (4.8%) categories offered relatively modest deals during the sale event.
Below, we delve deeper into our analysis of each category to better understand how price reductions were distributed across key subcategories on Amazon as well as the discounting strategies of Amazon’s leading competitors.
Apparel
As Amazon grappled with surplus inventory, heightened storage costs, and reduced profit margins in apparel (like most other retailers), its average discount before Prime Day was already as high as 13.3%. Then, on Prime Day, Amazon’s apparel deals were tempered at around 5.9% across an impressive 33.1% of its assortment, while Target and Walmart chose not to compete in a meaningful way.
Unlike Prime Day 2022, when Target competed with Amazon with high discounts, the retailer offered only 0.8% additional discount across 4.4% of its assortment in this category. Walmart, too, reduced its prices by only 1.4% on 8.5% of its assortment during Prime Day.
Across all the apparel subcategories we analyzed, Women’s Athleisure (8.7%), Men’s Swimwear (8%), and Women’s Tops (7.6%) were among the ones with the highest price reductions. On the other hand, Men’s Athleisure (2.5%), Women’s Shoes (3.5%), and Men’s Innerwear (4.1%) had conservative markdowns.
Pricing decisions across the various subcategories are likely to have been influenced by several factors like inventory levels, demand patterns, and the need to balance competitive offers with maintaining reasonable profit margins, as Amazon tried to cater to a more price-sensitive consumer.
Across all apparel subcategories, leading brands that offered the highest markdowns were Tommy Hilfiger (11.5%), Amazon Essentials (9.4%), Adidas (8.6%), and Calvin Klein (8.6%).
For brands, however, lowering prices is only one lever to attract and convert shoppers. They also need to ensure they’re highly visible and discoverable on Amazon’s search listings. This exponentially improves their chances of driving more clicks and conversions. In our analysis, we tracked the Share of Search of brands across several popular search keywords. Share of Search for a brand is defined as the proportion of the brand’s products in the top 20 search results for a search query.
Our data indicates that several brands gained impressive ground in their discoverability during Prime Day, while others fell behind. Gildan in Men’s Innerwear, Adidas in Men’s and Women’s Shoes, Anrabess in Women’s Athleisure, and Lululemon in Men’s Athleisure, among others, improved their Share of Search by significant levels during Prime Day.
On the other hand, brands like Hanes in Men’s and Women’s Innerwear, Kanu Surf in Men’s Swimwear, Cupshe in Women’s Swimwear, and others lost around 10% in their Share of Search during the event. This is likely to have impacted their sales volumes adversely.
Home & Furniture
The Home & Furniture industry has been challenged with reduced demand due to inflationary pressures over the past year or so. Leading retailers in the category overestimated the demand, leading to overstocking of inventory. As a result, Home & Furniture is one of the few categories that saw Amazon’s competitors participate at a significant level on Prime Day in order to ensure they don’t fall behind on liquidating their stock.
Amazon’s additional discounts averaged 4.8% across 30.2% of its assortment. Wayfair and Overstock too reduced their prices by 4.8% and 4.3% on around 44% of their respective assortments. Wayfair’s move is likely a part of their strategy to attract new customers and expand their market share, in response to a decline in their consumer base. Last year, Wayfair experienced a loss of 5 million out of its 1.3 billion consumers due to weakening demand.
Target and Walmart did offer additional discounts, but they were not at a competitive level. The Home Depot effectively opted not to compete at all during the sale event. Overall, the pricing actions of these retailers are in stark contrast to the highly conservative pricing strategies observed on Prime Day last year.
Our recent pricing analysis of the Home & Furniture category revealed more interesting insights and pricing dynamics over the past year.
Across all the subcategories we analyzed, Bookcases (8.2%), Rugs (7.8%), Mattresses (6.5%), and Luggage (6.2%) were among the ones with high price reductions.
Meanwhile, Sofas (2.4%), Washer / Dryers (2.4%), and Entertainment Units (2.7%) had lower markdowns. These are large and substantial purchases, making retailers more cautious about deeply discounting them while still ensuring profitability.
The brands that stepped up and offered the highest markdowns in this category include Zinus (20.2%), Comfee (10.8%), Sauder (9.9%), and Best Choice Products (8.7%).
In terms of Share of Search, Rockland in Luggage gained the highest (21%), followed by Farberware in Dishwasher, Olee Sleep in Mattresses, and Homeguave in Mattresses gained significant ground in their respective categories as shown in the image below.
Brands like Best Choice Products in Coffee Tables, Molblly in Mattresses, and Black+Decker in Washer/Dryers and Dishwashers lost a good portion of their Share of Search during the event. Due to high competition for visibility during sale events, brands that fail to keep an eye on their Share of Search stand to take a hit in their sales, especially in categories like Home & Furniture that tend to have low brand loyalty.
Consumer Electronics
2023 was the year of consumer electronics on Amazon Prime Day. Amazon’s price reduction during the sale averaged 10.4% across 54.5% of its assortment in the category. Target and Walmart, on the other hand, offered significantly lower additional discounts of 1.9% and 2.7% on 10.4% and 19.1% of their assortment, respectively.
The consumer electronics category often witnesses aggressive price reductions during Prime Day and other sale events due to its popularity and high demand. In addition, since retailer margins are usually low in this category, shoppers often have to wait for sale events like Prime Day (when brands markdown their wholesale rates) to have several attractive deals to choose from.
Across all the subcategories we analyzed, Smartwatches (15.4%), Wireless Headphones (15.4%), Earbuds (14.9%), Headphones (12.5%), and Tablets (12.0%), were among the ones with the highest price reductions. All of these subcategories are quite popular that tend to sell in large volumes during sale events.
Meanwhile, Laptops (2.1%), TVs (3.1%), and Smartphones (7.6%) had lower markdowns. A lower markdown on smartphones may reflect steady demand throughout the year, reducing the urgency to offer significant discounts during the short Prime Day window.
Amazon (22%), Tozo (12.5%), Lenovo (10.8%), JBL (8.3%), and Apple (5%) offered the highest price reductions in Consumer Electronics as a whole. Clearly, Amazon didn’t hold back on offering attractive deals on its own private label products in this category.
Consumer Electronics as a category tends to have a brand loyal shopper base. However, Share of Search generic search keywords are still very important for keywords like earbuds, headphones, and tablets that result in relatively lower priced products. HP in Laptops, Samsung in Tablets and TVs, and Oneplus in Smartphones all made strong strides in building their discoverability on Amazon during Prime Day. Beyond just driving more sales, this also has the intended effect of boosting brand awareness among high-intent shoppers.
Sony in Headphones, Asus in Laptops, and Insignia in TVs lost out to other brands in terms of their discoverability during the sale. Sony and Asus, especially would be hurting as they are prominent brands in their respective categories.
Health & Beauty
The Health & Beauty category is a favorite among consumers during Prime Day, as it encompasses a wide range of products like skincare, cosmetics, and grooming items. As shoppers often tend to stock up during the sale, brands and retailers are willing to offer competitive discounts and gain an edge over their competitors.
Our data reveals that the average additional discount on Amazon was 6.7%, offered on a little over a third of its assortment. Walmart reduced its prices sizably as well, by an average of 3.1% on 13.4% of its assortment.
Interestingly, Sephora and Ulta Beauty, leading retailers in the Health & Beauty category did not compete on price at all this Prime Day. It is likely they are confident their loyal customer base will not be influenced by Amazon’s Prime Day deals and be driven away merely by lower prices. In addition, keeping their prices steady during Prime Day might have been a strategic choice to protect their brand reputation and premium positioning.
Relatively premium subcategories like Electric Toothbrushes (10%), Moisturizer (8.3%), Beardcare (7.3%), and Make Up (6.7%) saw the highest price reductions on Amazon.
In contrast, staple items like Toothpaste (3.7%), Shampoos (5.4%), and Conditioners (5.7%) had lower markdowns.
Among the leading brands in this category, Oral-B (10.3%), Philips Sonicare (8.7%), Neutrogena (8.4%), and Colgate (5.6%) offered the most attractive deals during the sale event.
In terms of significant gains in Share of Search for brands, Oral-B in Electric Toothbrushes led the pack again. Neutrogena in Sunscreens and Somall in Toothpastes also gained more than 10% in their Share of Search during the sale event, followed by Tresemme in Shampoos and Airspun in Make-Up products.
Other popular brands like Crest in Toothpastes, e.l.f in Make-Up, Philips Sonicare in Electric Toothbrushes, and Sheamoisture in Beradcare surprisingly had reduced visibility among the top search results for relevant subcategories.
Staying Ahead of the Curve During Sale Events
This Prime Day, Amazon leveraged its scale to offer aggressive discounts across key product categories, while several competing retailers chose to sit back and let the sale play out. Others chose a selective discounting strategy that focused their modest price reductions on a small set of items.
At DataWeave, we understand the pivotal role competitive pricing insights play in empowering retailers and brands to gain a competitive edge, especially during crucial events like Prime Day. For retailers, the ability to track competitor prices accurately, at scale, in a timely manner is essential to plotting and acting on impactful pricing strategies and staying ahead of the curve.
Amazon India’s much-awaited annual two-day shopping event, Prime Day, kicked off with a bang on July 23rd & 24th this year & was one of the most successful Prime Day events yet! Amazon reported that more than 32,000 sellers saw their highest ever sales day during the event. Interestingly 70% of these sellers who received orders during Prime Day were based in Tier 2 cities in India, further validating how the post-pandemic eCommerce boom has spread across the country. Also, Indian exporters saw 50% business growth on Amazon on Prime Day as customers across markets like North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan continued to purchase Made In India products. It was a great 2 days for Indian sellers, but what about customers who were waiting in anticipation for the great deals typically offered on Prime Day? We dug into our data to take a look at the deals, discounts, and brands that shone bright on Prime Day in India.
Methodology
In addition to Amazon IN, we also tracked Flipkart on 23 & 24th July 2022, on Prime Day.
We looked at Additional Discounts offered on Prime Day: Additional Discount is the extra discount on an item during Prime Day when compared to the Pre-Prime Day price.
We also looked at Post Prime Day Discounts, which were the discounts offered after the 2-day event ended.
Amazon v/s Flipkart – who offered better discounts?
Prime Day discounts are legendary. And across the globe, during Prime Day retailers try and compete to see if they can offer better deals than Amazon. Forbes even published an article on the 36 Prime Day competitor sales that were way more enticing than what Amazon had to offer. In India, we wanted to see if Amazon’s homegrown rival Flipkart might give it a tough fight, so we tracked the volume of discounts across categories on both retailers.
Discounts on Amazon & Flipkart across categories
Out of the 4 categories we tracked, in spite of Prime Day, Amazon offered discounts higher than Flipkart in only 2 categories – Electronics & Beauty.
… while Flipkart offered higher discounts than Amazon in the Grocery & Fashion category. For groceries, Flipkart offered a 3.2% additional discount v/s 2.2% on Amazon. However, in the Fashion category, the difference was marginal – 8.1% on Amazon v/s 8.6% on Flipkart
Post-event, both Amazon & Flipkart went back to the original pre-event prices. This made it clear that Flipkart was tracking and making price changes based on their closest competitor. It’s what smart eCommerce businesses do to stay ahead in the race.
Interestingly, post-event, in the fashion category, not only did Amazon revert to the original pre-event price, they even increased prices by close to 2%.
Let’s take a look at discounts across 4 categories & the Brands that WON in each category.
From Electronics to Fashion, Beauty & Groceries, let’s deep dive into the data to see which products were highly discounted within each category and brands that sprinted ahead to win the race on Amazon on Prime Day 2022.
Amazon India released highlights from Prime Day and reported that Smartphones & Electronics were among the categories that saw the most success in terms of units sold.
From the 6 product categories we tracked within electronics, we saw the highest additional discounts on Smartwatches (13.4%), followed by Bluetooth headphones (10.5%)
TV, Smartphones, cameras, and laptops had an additional discount of between 3 – 5.5%
On Prime Day 2022, Amazon India reported that the top-selling consumer electronics brands were HP, Lenovo, Asus, and Boat to name a few. Our assumption is, these brands must’ve had a high Share of Search (SoS), which played a massive role in increasing sales, so we looked into our data to see which brands had the highest SoS against specific keywords related to electronics.
Brand Visibility against the Keywords
Our data aligned with what Amazon reported. HP had high sales, perhaps because they occupied the premium #1 spot in the laptop category with a 44% SoS! Simply put, this means of the 100 laptops that appeared on a page, against a search for the keyword laptop, 44 products were listed by HP! Consumers always gravitate towards buying products they can find with ease.
Lenovo had a 32% SoS for Laptops. Asus at 14%
The top selling smartphone brands reported by Amazon included OnePlus, Redmi, Samsung, Realme & iQOO – our data showed that 3 out of these 5 brands were in the top 5 listings on Prime Day! Redmi had a whopping 30% SoS against the keyword smartphone, Samsung at 15%, and iQOO at 5% – clear validation that a high SoS can positively impact sales.
BEAUTY & GROOMING
Now let’s look at discounts in the beauty & grooming category.
Discounts on Beauty Products on Prime Day
The highest additional discounts were given on shampoos (9.3%), followed by Lipsticks (6.6%)
Shaving kits for men were at an additional discount of 3.4%. Hair gel at 4.9% & Face Masks at 4.3%
In the beauty category, Amazon India reported that top-selling brands included Head & Shoulders, Dove, Biotique, L’Oreal, Sugar Cosmetics, and Mamaearth to name a few. Once again, we looked into our data to see the sort of brand visibility & SoS each of these brands had.
All the top-selling brand’s Amazon reported on we noticed appeared in the top 5 search results.
Head & Shoulders & Dove were the top 2 listings against the keyword Shampoo at 26% & 16% SoS respectively. Biotique came in at #5 with a 7% SoS
Bombay Shaving Company, Gillette, and Axe were the top grooming brands for men in the Shaving Kit category.
Lakme made a clean sweep with a 19% SoS against the keyword lipstick, which speaks volumes, considering the aggressive competition from D2C beauty brands in India today.
GROCERY
According to the New eCommerce in India report by consulting firm Redseer, grocery has been a major contributor to the growth of ecommerce in India & Amazon Fresh used Prime Day to grab a larger piece of that pie! As part of the Prime Day sale, Amazon Fresh also pushed discounts on groceries, as well as fruits and vegetables. We tracked products that fell into the “snack” category, and here’s what we saw.
Discounts on Snacks on Prime Day
Given changing lifestyles & healthy food fads, it was no surprise that we saw the highest additional discounts were given on Healthy Snacks (3.2%) & Diet Food (2.7%)
Chocolates and chips saw much lower additional discounts at 1.2% each.
Drinks were additionally discounted by 2.5% during Prime Day.
Cadbury had a 69% share of search against the keyword Chocolate, leaving some of its key competitors way behind. Amul had a 20% SoS, while Hershey’s was at just 4%.
According to an article in the Economic times, YogaBar tripled sales in FY22, which is why we were not surprised to see the brand at #1 when users were searching for “Healthy Snacks” during Prime Day. YogaBar products typically enjoy high visibility year-round, which clearly helped with brand awareness on Amazon & sales.
FASHION
Amazon reported that Men’s t-shirts and polos, denims, Kurtis, tops, and dresses for women, designer wear, and clothing for kids were some of the most-loved fashion categories on Prime Day. We looked into our data to see the trends that emerged.
Discounts on Fashion on Prime Day
From the categories we tracked, women’s handbags had the highest additional discount (11.8%), followed by watches (9.1%)
Sneakers & jeans had additional discounts in the ballpark of 7% and sunglasses at 4.4%
Some of the usual suspects made it to the top 5, but what really stood out for us were brands that popped up against the keyword Jeans. While Levi’s came in at #2 with an 11% SoS, 2 Private Label Amazon brands featured in the top 5! Symbol at 27% SoS and Inkast Denim at 9%
Against the keyword Handbag, Lavie had a massive lead at 38% v/s the #2 brand – Caprese, at 13%
Boat found a #2 spot against the keyword watches, racing way ahead of the age-old popular brand Fastrack at #5 with a 4% SoS.
Conclusion
Amazon Prime Day 2022 in India came to a successful close as shoppers across India discovered the joy of the 2 day celebration with the best deals, savings, new launches, and more. Prime members from 95% of pin codes in India made purchases, there were 1000’s of deals and 500+ new product launches from brand partners & sellers. Nearly 18% more sellers grossed sales over INR 1 crore, and close to 38% more sellers grossed sales of over 1 lakh vs Prime Day 2021. Local neighborhood shops that sell on Amazon witnessed 4x sales growth. And start-ups and brands under the Amazon Launchpad program witnessed a growth of 3x. All in all, a successful event for everyone involved!
In 2022, Amazon sold 300 million products during Prime Day – selling roughly 100,000 items per minute. Since Amazon started Prime Day in 2015 to celebrate its 20th birthday, the shopping festival has grown into a holiday and rivals Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S. and Singles’ Day in China.
According to RetailDetail, the leading B2B retail community in Benelux, Amazon is planning a 2nd Prime Day shopping festival in the autumn, just a few months after its annual Prime Day event. The retailer has asked its sales partners to prepare for a promotional event in the autumn where they have until the beginning of September to propose attractive discounts, with at least 20% discounts. This year’s second Prime Day may occur in October, with or without the same name.
But before that, let’s examine what happened in Germany this year on Prime Day 2022.
Methodology
We tracked Amazon.deboth before &on 12 & 13th July 2022, on Prime Day.
We looked at Additional Discounts offered on Prime Day: Additional Discount is the extra discount on an item during Prime Day when compared to the Pre-Prime day price.
We also looked at Post Prime Day Discounts, which were the discounts offered after the 2-day event ended.
What kind of Discounts did Amazon.de offer?
Amazon Prime Day will be significant, especially for customers hoping to get discounts amid soaring inflation. Both Amazon as well as other sources reported that electrical and electronic items were the most popular purchases, followed by general retail products. Electrical and electronics saw the value of transactions soar 90% on the first day. Mobile phones and accessories were the most popular, with transaction values almost doubling to 96% on day one.
Discounts across Categories on Amazon.de
Based on trends from past events, Amazon likely knew electronic items were going to be best sellers. Keeping this in mind, they made sure to offer high discounts in the electronics category. They offered a 6.5% additional discount on electronics on Prime Day. And once the sale ended, they continued to discount electronics by 1.3%.
The Fashion category also had a fair bit of discounts and came in at a close second at 5.9%
Looks like Amazon discounted everyday use items minimally. Groceries had an additional discount of just 1.8% on Prime Day, and wine and spirits had 2% extra discount.
Discounts on Electronics Category on Amazon.de
Within Electronics, in the four categories we tracked, we saw the highest additional discounts were offered on Bluetooth earphones (10.6%) and Smartwatches (9%)
Discounts on Fashion Category on Amazon.de
Jeans and Sunglasses had the highest discounts at 8.6% & 7.6% respectively.
Sneakers & Watches too had additional discounts of 6.6% on Prime Day.
Post the Prime Day event, Amazon retained an average of 1.5% discount across all products in the fashion category instead of pricing them at the original price.
However, in the case of women’s T-Shirts, they increased the price by 1.7% from the pre-event price.
Discounts across Price Tiers
Retailers must consider several factors when making strategic discounting decisions, including customer buying behavior, the type of discount offered & the volume of discount offered. The best discounting approach will vary depending on the product and other factors like the original selling price of the product.
Now let’s compare the discounting strategy Amazon used in the Electronics v/s Fashion category on Prime Day.
Discounts across Price Ranges
Interestingly, in both the Electronics and Fashion categories, Amazon increased prices for the lowest-end products between the €0-10 range by 3.6% and 13.2%, respectively, during the sale instead of discounting them! Maybe this was a strategy to drive consumers to higher-value products with greater discounts?
Another similarity in strategy was that most of the mid-priced items had maximum discounts. In electronics & fashion both, the maximum discounts were given to products between the € 30-100 range.
Here’s a difference that stood out – for Electronics in the higher price range between €100 – 500, the volume of discounts dropped a bit which meant Amazon gave moderate discounts on high-end electronics. But the trend flipped for Fashion as luxury fashion items were made to look more attractive with higher discounts.
Monitoring stock availability during key sales days is critical
Brands need to have the right stock availability, especially during sale events, because more customers shop online during sales. What’s worse, non-availability of products may drive customers to competitors that are stocking the same product. Out-of-stock situations lead to missed opportunities & lost sales! Let’s take a look at our data and see how Amazon planned product availability across categories on Prime Day.
Availability Analysis across Categories on Prime Day
Amazon was betting big on 2 categories – Electronics & Home. This meant they needed to keep a keen eye on availability in these categories, especially since they forecasted the highest sales to be generated here. … it was no surprise that the Furniture category had almost 100% availability during Prime Day! Electronics too had a high availability at 94% during the event.
Generally, our data showed that availability across multiple categories we tracked seemed robust and above 80% in more cases. Only Beauty & Grocery had 79% availability.
Conclusion
Prime Day sales reached an estimated 12 billion U.S. dollars worldwide, 9.8% higher than last year, making it the most successful shopping event in Amazon’s history. If you’re a brand selling on Amazon or a retailer trying to compete with Amazon, reach out to us at DataWeave to know how we can help!
Prime Day launched in 2015 as a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Amazon’s founding & has quickly become the biggest shopping event of the year for Amazon. Prime Day is a great opportunity for customers to snag fantastic deals on products they might not otherwise consider buying. Last year, Amazon Prime Day was a tremendous success, with Prime members spending billions of dollars on discounted items. In 2022 alone, global sales during the event reached a new record high of $12 Bn.
18 countries participated in Prime Day this year, including the US. We did a deep dive into what happened in the UK – the discounts Amazon offered and categories with the highest discounts as well as checked to see if other retailers tweaked their pricing strategy to compete with Amazon on Prime Day.
Methodology
In addition to Amazon UK, we tracked some key retailers on 12 & 13th July 2022, on Prime Day. Retailers tracked – eBay UK, OnBuy, Selfridges, ASOS.com, Net-A-Porter
We looked at Additional Discounts offered on Prime Day: Additional Discount is the extra discount on an item during Prime Day when compared to the Pre-Prime day price.
We also looked at Post Prime Day Discounts, which were the discounts offered after the 2-day event ended.
Did other retailers compete with Amazon on Prime Day?
Traditionally, as Amazon’s Prime Day sale approaches, other retailers adjust their prices by offering summer deals or getting creative with offers. However, we did not see aggressive strategies from other retailers this year. In the US, Walmart always has a sale during Amazon’s Prime Day. The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart announced there wouldn’t be an annual promotional event on Prime Day 2022 this year.
Another report published by Forrester stated that major retailers scaled back their promotions, and overall offers from other retailers were less than impressive. We took a look at the data we gathered in the UK to see if this trend aligned.
Discounts offered on Prime Day on Amazon v/s other retailers
Our data showed that most retailers we tracked offered negligible discounts (in the range of 0.1 – 1.5%) and did not really try and compete or match the discounts Amazon was offering.
However, ASOS was the one retailer that competed heavily with Amazon in the Fashion & Beauty category. While Amazon offered an average additional discount of 7.7% in the Fashion category, ASOS offered 13.2%. And in the beauty category, Amazon offered 6.7%, while ASOS offered 15.2%.
Which were the popular categories that offered the most discounts?
During Prime Day, shoppers saw tons of deals on essential gadgets. Tech deals were a massive hit and saw big discounts on everything from TVs, laptops, smartwatches, phones, and tablets. We look at the data we collected to see if we saw a similar trend.
Discounts on Amazon UK across categories
Amazon offered discounts across categories and reported that some of the best-selling categories were Consumer Electronics & Home.
Our data too showed that the highest additional discounts were offered in electronics – Bluetooth Earphones at 18.4%, followed by Smartwatches at 14.9% and Laptops as well as Cameras, both at 12%.
Low discounts were offered on Alcohol, with Beer at 0.9% and Wine at 1.3%, respectively.
Relatively attractive discounts were seen in the Fashion & Beauty category – Sunglasses (9.1%), Shampoo (9.7%), & Watches (9.4%)
Discounts on Amazon UK in the Electronics category
Electronics being the hot favorite – we wanted to deep dive into the data and get more insights on Amazon’s pricing & discounting strategy here. Discounts can entice customers to buy more, encourage customer loyalty, or clear out old inventory. However, businesses must be careful since too much discounting can eat into profits. They also have to be mindful of which products should be discounted and by how much.
Our data showed that the highest discounts (between 13 – 18%) were given on electronics priced between the £ 20-100 price range.
Electronics priced higher, between the £ 100 – 500 pound price range, were discounted less than 10%
However, high-value premium electronics over £ 500 were discounted slightly above 10%
How did Amazon manage stock availability during Prime Day?
Keeping track of inventory is especially important during big sales like Prime Day when thousands of customers are actively looking for deals. There’s nothing worse than them finding the item they wanted is out of stock (OOS). OOS leads to lost sales, a situation that must be avoided at all costs. Read about how a small short term stock out on Amazon led to long term negative impacts for one of our customers. And let’s also look at the data and see what product availability looked like on Prime Day.
Overall, Amazon maintained robust availability across categories, and re-stocking was constant both before, during & after the event.
Furniture, Fashion & Electronics had the highest availability. No surprise there since Amazon estimated that Home/ Furniture would be one of the best-selling categories.
Grocery saw average availability – perhaps cause some of these products are perishables, so it’s best to be mindful about overstocking.
Which Brands Won on Prime Day?
If there is one thing to remember about improving your product visibility on Amazon, it’s that it all boils down to the usage of the right keywords. Using relevant keywords makes your product appear higher up in search when customers are running searches on Amazon for those products. And the higher up a product appears in search, the higher the chances of a sale!
Let’s take a look at some popular categories and which brands had the highest Share of Search (SoS) during Prime Day.
Corona, San Miguel, and Becks were the top 3 brands optimized for the keyword Beer. However, what’s really important to note is both Corona & Becks had 20% SoS that was completely organic. San Miguel had a 20% SoS too, but it was sponsored ads that gave them this artificial boost.
While a whole bunch of other brands had a 10% SoS most of them achieved this via Sponsored Ads. Youngever was the only brand that achieved this completely organically. They must have made sure they optimized key KPIs like content, ratings & reviews & product availability to achieve this result.
Asus sponsored 28% of products before Prime Day, hoping to capitalize on the pre-sale frenzy. During the event, they sponsored only 13% of products, bringing down their total SoS from 31% before the event to 13% during the event.
Lenovo followed the opposite strategy; they sponsored just 6% of products before the event and during the event sponsored a whopping 25% which made them “almost” dominate the Laptop category during Prime Day.
Then there was Microsoft, with the highest SoS at 38%, of which all of it was organic!
The Smartphone SoS battle was clearly between Samsung & Xiaomi. Samsung was a consistent #1 at all 3 time periods (Before, During & After Prime Day) with the highest total SoS. Xiaomi came in at a close second.
Samsung had an exciting strategy – they went heavy on sponsorships before and after the event. Their sponsored SoS was 31% & 39% respectively. And SoS of 13% during the event.
Xiaomi’s strategy was just the opposite. Their sponsored SoS was 16% before the event. And 17% after the event, which was moderate compared to their Sponsored SoS during the event at 25%, which was much higher than Samsung’s 13%
Critical to note, Xiaomi’s organic search visibility before, during, and after the event was 0%. It definitely should be a concern area for any brand.
Share of search
Both before & after the event, Cadbury had the highest visibility for the keyword Chocolate. During the event, they were not in the top 5 brands.
During Prime Day, Nestle won the top spot and had a 29% SoS. However, before the event, they were at #3 and after at #2. Artificially boosting visibility might’ve had something to do with this.
Conclusion
Prime Day sales reached an estimated 12 billion U.S. dollars worldwide, 9.8% higher than last year, making it the most successful shopping event in Amazon’s history. If you’re a brand selling on Amazon or a retailer trying to compete with Amazon, reach out to us at DataWeave to know how we can help!
As inflation hits another 40-year high at 9.1 percent, U.S. consumers geared up for their first sign of hope and relief in the form of anticipated discount buys – 2022 Amazon Prime Days, or so we thought. While Prime Days have grown to become a promotional period almost as important as Black Friday to digital shoppers, the combination of economic uncertainty, inflationary pressures, and supply chain challenges seemed to alter the discount strategy expected given activity seen during 2021 Prime Days.
Our analyst team has been hard at work aiming to provide a ‘first look’ at 2022 Prime Day Promotional Insights, tracking discounts offered across 46,000+ SKUs within key categories like Electronics, Clothing, Health & Beauty and Home, on seven major retailer websites – Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Sephora, Ulta, Lowe’s and Home Depot. Our analysis compares prices seen during Amazon Prime Day 2022 on July 12th, to pre-Prime Day maximum value prices seen in the ten days leading up to Prime Days, to determine the average change in discounts offered during the promotional period. Below is a summary of our findings.
Competitive Promotions Give Amazon a Run for their Money
Amazon offered the greatest average discount enhancements for Electronics at 5.6 percent followed by Health & Beauty items at 5.1 percent, and Home products at 4.2 percent versus pre-Prime Day discounts seen across the categories considered within our analysis. The only category reviewed where average discounts were greater on a competitor’s website was on Target.com within the Clothing category. As seen below, Clothing on Target.com average discounts were 6.8 percent greater than pre-Prime Day offers, which was 2.6 percent higher than the average discounts offered for Clothing on Amazon.
Target Capitalizes on Growth Opportunity in Clothing Category
Diving deeper into the details of where Target won within the Clothing category, you can see a majority of their promotional activity took place within Women’s Accessories where discounts offered were 18.5 percent greater than those seen pre-Prime Day 2022, which was almost 15 percent greater than the discount enhancements seen on Amazon for Women’s Accessories. In fact, Women’s Shoes and Sneakers were the only two categories where the average discounts offered were greater on Amazon than on Target.com.
Overall, the discounts offered on Target.com within the Clothing category were primarily concentrated within items priced $40 and lower, but what was most interesting is that within the $10 and under price bucket, Target offered average discounts of over 11 percent whereas Amazon increased prices for these items on average by over 9 percent.
While most of the Clothing available on both Amazon and Target.com during Prime Days 2022 were offered without a price change, the greatest discount percentages tracked were within the range of 10-25 percent off on Amazon whereas Target chose to offer the bulk of their promotions at 25 percent off an up.
Strategic Promotional Strategies Defined at the Electronics Subcategory Level
When it comes to the Electronics category on Prime Day, the big question is always who will win the battle of the brands. Below shows the difference in average pricing and promotions discounts offered between products manufactured by Samsung versus Apple across each retailer platform, noting discounts were almost 3 percent greater on average for Apple versus Samsung products on Amazon, and Apple discounts were almost 5 percent greater on Amazon versus than those seen on Target.com.
Amazon wasn’t going all in on Apple however, as we saw ‘Alexa’ devices (Amazon products) available on Best Buy and Target websites also, but the discounts were almost 4 percent greater on Amazon versus Target and over 7 percent greater than the discounts seen on BestBuy.com.
While the average discounts offered within the Electronics category were greatest on Amazon (5.6 percent) versus Best Buy (3.9 percent) and Target (3.4 percent) as noted within the first chart of this blog and across brands and technologies considered above, the discounts offered on Amazon were strategically focused between 10-25 percent as seen below.
Amazon’s Electronics promotions were also targeted at smaller price points, items priced between $20-500, whereas Best Buy and Target offered greater promotions for electronics priced $500 and up than Amazon.
Below is a snapshot of price buckets tracked for Electronics available on BestBuy.com, highlighting where most of the promotional activity was targeted at products priced $50 and up during Prime Days 2022, with discounts ranging from 10 percent up to greater than 25 percent greater than pre-Prime day prices.
The standout categories were TVs on Target.com with discounts averaging nearly 12 percent greater than those seen pre-Prime day, and smartphones on BestBuy.com with discounts averaging just over 11 percent greater than those seen pre-Prime Day. The category with the greatest average discount enhancements seen on Amazon during Prime Days 2022 was for Wireless Headphones with an average discount of 8.7 percent.
Home is Where Amazon’s Heart Was on Prime Day
Amazon dominated offers within the Home categories, especially for products within mid ($40-100) and higher price ranges (items priced $200-500), with the bulk of the discounts offered between 10-25 percent. There was little to no promotional activity seen across all price points on Lowe’s or Home Depot’s websites within the categories we tracked, and most other competitive offers on Home products were seen on BestBuy.com for products priced from $50-500. Even a subcategory like Tools offered deeper average discounts on Amazon (4.7 percent) than discounts seen on HomeDepot.com (1.1 percent) or Lowes.com (0 percent).
For Large Appliances, Amazon was the only retailer to off any significant discount across each major subcategory with the greatest average discount being on Ovens at 6 percent, followed by Refrigerators at 4 percent. One caveat with this category, when we reviewed Large Appliance prices two weeks prior to Prime Days, we saw average price increases around 16.7 percent occurring on Amazon.
During Prime Days 2022 however, Amazon also offered top average discounts for small appliances, except for on Instant Pots which appeared to have greater average discounts on Target.com (5.9 percent versus 4.2 percent on Amazon), and Vacuum Cleaners which appeared to have the best promotion of appliances small and large at 13.8 percent average discount on BestBuy.com. Another subcategory deeply discounted on BestBuy.com was weighted blankets, which averaged discounts around 18.5 percent versus Amazon’s average discount at only 6.2 percent.
Health & Beauty Retailer Pricing Strategies Revealed
Given the importance Health & Beauty Brands placed on Prime Day sales last year, we had anticipated to see more offers, especially within pure-play beauty retail channels, than we did for this booming category.
Amazon drove most of the Health & Beauty offers seen averaging 5.1% discounts versus other retailers only offering less than 1% on average, but discounts were aimed at a targeted group of SKUs on Amazon, bringing the average discount lower overall. Most of the promotions offered on Amazon fell within mid-range price points ($20-50) and were discounted between 10-25 percent versus pre-Prime Day prices.
Target.com offered the most comparable discounts to Amazon for Health & Beauty products on average, but their strategy primarily focused on items within the $20 and lower price range with discounts ranging primarily between 10-25 percent.
More 2022 Prime Day Insights Coming Soon
We know the significance visibility to critical pricing and promotional insights play in enabling retailers and brands to offer the right discounts to stay competitive, especially during promotional periods like Prime Days. While this blog is intended to provide a ‘sneak peek’ into 2022 Prime Day insights for the U.S. market, we will be providing more extensive, global coverage and will proactively share new insights with the marketplace as they become available throughout the month of July.
Be sure to also check out our Press page for access to the latest media coverage on Prime Day insights and more. Don’t hesitate to reach out to our team if there is any particular category you are interested in seeing in more detail, or for access to more information on our Commerce Intelligence and Digital Shelf solutions.
