Amazon Prime Day 2021 Recap
Amazon Prime Day 2021 was the biggest event to date for the e-commerce giant, but as with any major event, there were both positives and negatives. There were more deals than ever, bringing in record sales and especially major growth for small businesses. Sellers faced challenges with the global supply chain and stocking and shipping complications due to Covid-19 and some discounts were not as thrilling as previous years.
We evaluated the performance of our clients and analyzed sales data compared to general performance as well as previous Prime Days. We also looked at Amazon's post-Prime Day reports to develop an informative Prime Day 2021 Recap.Ultimately, Prime Day is meant to simultaneously benefit Amazon, sellers and shoppers. The goal is to bring in more Prime subscribers, to boost sales and promote products on Amazon. This year, Amazon also made it a goal to promote small businesses and third-party (3P) sellers.
Prime Day and the days leading up to it only reinforced the symbiotic relationship between Amazon and 3P sellers. Sellers allow Amazon to provide their shoppers with a wide variety of products, but Amazon gives these sellers and small businesses a platform to reach a much larger audience and make more sales than would ever be possible on their own.
Performance Overview
Leading up to Prime Day, from June 7- June 20, Amazon offered a special promotion dedicated to supporting small businesses. The Spend 10, Get 10 program in the US included over 300,000 sellers and offered a $10 credit to Prime shoppers who spent at least $10 on small business products. The two week promotion alone brought in $1.9B for small businesses and was only the start of the momentum that carried on through the 2-day event. Prime Day resulted in a total of over $11B in sales and sales for 3P sellers this year had a greater than 100% year over year increase from Prime Day 2020, also with potentially 5x more new-to-brand shoppers.Product and Category Review
- Bestselling categories (globally, according to Amazon): Smart Tech dominated the market. Also popular: tools, beauty, nutrition, baby care, electronics, apparel and household products
- Highest average discounts: Toys - 12%
- Lowest average discounts: Electronics - 2%
- Top performing products: robot vacuums, coffee makers and accessories, among other smart tech and electronics, including Amazon branded products
Challenges
- Global supply chain issues combined with worldwide shipping container shortages still resulting from Covid-19 complications caused backups in inventory
- Many factories are also temporarily shut down
- Sellers had difficulty keeping stock up
- Larger brands with more flexible budgets could plan ahead and order up to 3 months in advance and store stock, but smaller businesses with less budget had a difficult time keeping stock levels up
Shopper Behavior
- 45% of orders were placed for $20 or less
- 55% of purchasers placed two or more separate orders
- 65% purchased only at Amazon
- 20% purchased only another merchant
Our Experience
- Prime Day in general performs much better in the US marketplace than in the EU. While there is some uplift in the EU, it is nowhere near that of the US
- There were generally higher CPCs on the 2nd Prime Day across all accounts and markets
- The highest traffic was on the first day, with the exception of the Mexico Marketplace, for which the second day saw more traffic
- Overall, we anticipated more traffic and, therefore, had a difficult time spending the entire deal budget
- All other indicators were very individualized depending on deal setup, budget and categories