Amazon will hold a global shopping event called ‘Prime Day’ next Wednesday (July 15) to celebrate its 20th anniversary and claimed this will have more deals than Black Friday, the traditionally biggest online shopping day of the year, with a similar surge in e-retail parcel volumes expected.
The event will be organised exclusively for Amazon Prime members in the USA, UK, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada and Austria. Deals will start at midnight on July 15, with new deals coming every ten minutes. New and existing Prime members can thus profit from thousands of the so-called Lightning Deals, several Deals of the Day and unlimited fast, free shipping.
“Prime Day is a one-day only event filled with more deals than Black Friday, exclusively for Prime members around the globe. Members tell us every day how much they love Prime and we will keep making it better,” Greg Greeley, Vice President Amazon Prime, said.
On Prime Day, members will be able to shop across dozens of categories including electronics, toys, movies, clothing, patio, lawn and garden, sports and outdoor items, among others.
In the UK, Amazon is offering customers the opportunity to join Amazon Prime before midnight on 8 July for a discounted price of £59 for the first year. “We’re offering Prime members thousands of deals on Prime Day. In fact, in the UK we are offering more than double the number of deals that we offered last Black Friday,” Christopher North, Managing Director at Amazon UK, said.
In France, Amazon also offers customers who want to become Prime members a special offer of €29 instead of €49 for the first year. On Prime Day, Amazon.fr will feature exceptional promotions on more than 200,000 articles via 16 flash sales and thousands of flash offers.
Amazon Germany highlighted discounts of up to 50% on over 3,000 flash offers and more than 15 deals of the day. The flash offers will be available while stocks last for a maximum of two hours and can be sold out very quickly.
In the USA, Amazon Prime members pay $99 a year for unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on more than 20 million items across all categories and $5.99 for all the same-day delivery items they order. Membership also includes unlimited streaming of tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video, one million songs and hundreds of playlists with Prime Music as well as access to more than 800,000 books to borrow with the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.
In addition, Prime members in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Dallas, Manhattan, Miami, and London can profit from one and two hour delivery on a selection of tens of thousands of everyday essentials with the dedicated Prime Now mobile app.
Amazon has commissioned local artists in Prime Day countries to create public art to promote the event and is also holding a parallel photo contest for its new ‘Prime Living’ members’ forum.
Black Friday has established itself as a major online shopping day in the USA, Europe and other parts of the world. On Black Friday last year, which fell on 28 November, e-commerce sales in the USA surged by 26% to more than $1.5 billion, according to digital measurement company comScore. In the UK, Amazon had its busiest day ever on Black Friday with more than 5.5 million items sold. This sale surge led to a massive growth in delivery volumes challenging parcel operators to get orders delivered within the promised times.
Similar online shopping events are also very popular in China, with Alibaba Group’s massive ‘11.11’ sale in November and Taobao Marketplace’s ‘12.12.’ sale in December helping generate record business for express delivery companies last year. In November 2014 alone, Chinese express companies saw their delivery volumes soar by 51% to 1.65 billion items.
