Graphic: Amazon led a group of US retailers to show how online shopping will play a greater role in the holiday shopping season

American e-commerce company Amazon's Prime Day promotion has caused consumers to spend billions of dollars on the Internet, and it also kicked off the year-end holiday shopping season. It is expected that this year's holiday shopping season will be mainly e-commerce shopping.

Data from market research firm Edison Trends shows that compared with last year's Prime Day, during the two-day event, consumption on Amazon's US website increased by 36%, but this increase was lower than the company's 42% increase last year. Prior to the start of the Prime Day promotion, market research firm eMarketer predicted that Amazon's total Prime Day sales in the US market would reach 6.17 billion US dollars.

Amazon did not disclose detailed financial data for this year's promotional activities, but the company said that during the promotional activities, third-party business sales on the Amazon platform exceeded US$3.5 billion, an increase of nearly 60% over last year. The iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner and Kids Against Maturity card game are the best-selling products in the US market.

Data from Digital Commerce 360 and Salesforce show that in addition to Amazon's death by him, sales of other e-commerce platforms in the United States during the Prime Day promotion have also increased significantly. Compared with the first day of the Prime Day promotion in 2019, online shopping sales in the United States increased by 76% this Tuesday. Affected by the epidemic, millions of Americans work or study from home, and retailers have seen a sharp increase in consumer spending online.

At the beginning of the outbreak, Amazon struggled to cope with the surge in online orders, so it postponed its annual Prime Day promotion. Analysts said that Prime Day promotion from the summer to close to Black Friday may have suppressed some consumer spending. Black Friday after Thanksgiving is a day when many retailers hold large-scale promotions. Preliminary research by Numerator, a company that tracks consumption data, shows that during this promotion, each American household’s spending on Amazon.com has dropped by about 28% from last year.

Amazon is a leader in the US retail market. This year, large retailers also showed people that online consumption during the shopping season will play a greater role than ever. For many dominant companies, the overall retail situation during the shopping season remains unstable. Many retailers still plan to close stores during Thanksgiving, and conduct online transactions during the Black Friday shopping season in November and December to reduce on-site traffic.

According to data from Edison Trends, compared with last year, Amazon's e-commerce market share during the Prime Day promotion has fallen by about 1.5%, while the market share of companies such as Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy has increased by a small amount. The three companies and other major retailers will conduct competitive sales during Prime Day. This is the conclusion drawn by Edison Trends and other data analysis companies by analyzing hundreds of thousands of US market exchanges.

Consumers said that as the holidays approach, they plan to continue to buy most of their products online. According to a survey conducted by Numerator on more than 2,000 shoppers, more than half of consumers said that their main shopping channel during the holidays was online shopping, which was more than double the number last year.

Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at eMarketer, said: "The difference this year is that more people are shopping online. Now Prime Day has kicked off the retail sales promotion period, which has extended holiday shopping. Season." "The cake of e-commerce is bigger this year."

Few companies have benefited more than Amazon. According to analysts surveyed by FactSet, the company achieved record profits this year, with sales expected to reach $111.8 billion in the fourth quarter. This will be nearly $25 billion higher than the company's sales in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Although Prime Day is profitable for Amazon, it still only accounts for a small part of the entire holiday shopping season. During the Christmas period last year, total US retail revenue exceeded $1 trillion. According to eMarketer, total US e-commerce sales during the holiday this year will increase by 35% to approximately US$190 billion, more than double the increase last year. Analysts said they believe that starting the holiday shopping season early will not ultimately affect total sales.

Although Amazon has advanced the start of the holiday shopping season, retail analysts still expect a large number of shopping promotions around Black Friday. Black Friday is usually when retailers start selling at the end of the year. A recent survey of about 3,500 American consumers by research firm NPD Group shows that 14% of consumers plan to start shopping on Black Friday, down from 17% last year.

Amazon’s booming promotions are also accompanied by employee rights campaigns across the United States, including an online petition targeting the productivity expectations of Amazon warehouse workers, and a protest at the Shakopi factory in Minnesota. Prior to this, Amazon employees have used Prime Day promotions to vent their dissatisfaction to the company. (Chenchen)

Source: NetEase Technology Report, translated by Google Translate