How Amazon Prime Day — the 'Black Friday of July' — has transformed online shopping

Amazon Prime Day, dubbed by shopaholics on the web as the “Black Friday of July,” will launch its 10th yearly discounting frenzy at midnight on Tuesday — and experts say the event has transformed how web retailers do business.

The first aim of Amazon Prime Day was to solve a problem that has dogged retailers for ages: enticing consumers to shop during a historically slow buying season.

In its inaugural event on July 15, 2015, customers bought more Amazon merchandise than they did on Black Friday a year earlier, according to a timeline of Prime Days milestones.

Now, Prime Day sales are taking place in more than 20 countries and the event has spawned a movement with dozens of retailers holding similar events in July.

Demand has grown so exponentially over the past decade that the company’s servers crashed in 2018 for several hours. The company insisted at the time that the impact on its sales was minimal.

Prime Day is also aimed at driving prime membership subscriptions, of which there are about 180 million members, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. 

When it first launched Amazon offered deals for just 24 hours in nine countries. 

By 2017 it had expanded to 30 hours and 13 countries and Amazon Prime expanded the event to 48 hours in 2019.

The pandemic and its supply chain snafus forced Amazon to move Prime Day for one year to October.

Nevertheless, for the third year in a row, Amazon will lose market share to other retailers during Prime Day, according to a new report from market researcher, eMarketer.

Retailers both large and small followed its lead in recent years by offering their own promotions at first during the same dates as Amazon Prime and then later claiming dates a week prior to the big event.

Amazon will drive the vast majority of online sales during Prime Day — a whopping 59% — but this year will mark the third consecutive year that Amazons growth is slowing.

That’s because the Seattle-based trailblazer has a multitude of copycats that are nipping at its heels and grabbing market share.

This year, fast-growing Chinese discounter Temu is trying to steal Prime Days thunder by offering Temu Week, which runs through July 18 and is touting 90% off on some items.

I think Amazon this year is largely sticking to its tried-and-tested Prime Day playbook, which means driving Prime sign-ups, Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at eMarketer told Vox. 

To that end, some of the biggest discounts this year are invite-only deals from big brands that only Prime members can get, including a Peloton bike which will be 30% off, while a pair of Sony headphones are 55% off, according to the report.