You don’t need a doctorate in economics to know that Amazon mean business. Jeff Bezos’ virtual warehouse is the biggest online retailer in the world, delivering billions upon billions of dollars worth of everything from the latest BookTok best seller to plastic ring sizers each year.
Back in 2005, they founded Prime, a membership scheme that offered shoppers discounts on products and deals on shipping. Since then, they’ve added numerous other incentives, including a streaming service. You can even watch selected Premier League football matches exclusively on Prime these days.
Never shy of celebrating their own success, Amazon founded Prime Day in 2015. The annual event has become as embedded in the consumer calendar as the Bank Holiday sales and Black Friday.
2024’s two day e-commerce extravaganza takes place on the 16th and 17th of July. Last year’s Prime Day was the biggest single day in the company’s trading history, with shoppers around the world spending a staggering $2.5 billion on goods stocked and supplied by Amazon. Can they top that this year?
Using CintSnap – a way to survey individuals and understand opinions quickly – we conducted a poll with approximately 300 from Australia, the UK and the US to discover what makes Prime Day such a big deal for consumers.
We’re gonna need a bigger delivery van
If you’ve stepped out of the house in the past few years you’ll likely have seen a Prime-branded van doing the rounds: people really cannot get enough of next day deliveries.
That might explain why Amazon can boast an astonishing 230 million Prime subscribers worldwide – and our survey shows that a majority of people Cint polled slot into that dataset. 72% of Americans and 61% of Brits are subscribers themselves. That figure drops slightly in Australia where just under half of respondents (47%) deposit AU$9.99 a month for a membership.
The Prime Day prices are evidently a draw for shoppers eyeing up membership. Around a third of respondents who aren’t currently using the service stated that the sale event is likely to lead them to signing up.
Who cares?
They’ve got the subscriber numbers, but has Amazon won the hearts and minds of their shoppers?
Asked to describe their feelings toward Prime Day and other similar events, a little over half (53%) of UK respondents considered themselves excited by the opportunity to snap up a bargain or two. Sentiments were similar in Australia where one in two people share that sense of excitement.
However, not everyone is gearing up to go wild on Prime Day. Nearly one in 10 Brits are of the opinion that sales days of this nature are manipulative and manufactured. That attitude is shared by 6% of Australians, while over in the US the figure drops to a teeny-tiny 2%.
Some of our respondents just feel flat about the whole thing. 14% of Australians are disinterested in them, and that’s echoed by 12% of both Americans and Brits who were polled.
Deal or no deal?
When it comes to differentiating between other similar shopping events – like the behemoth that is Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) – Prime subscribers are surprisingly territorial.
53% of US Prime subscribers consider it to offer better deals than rival events, and 41% of Brits agree. Australians are a little more reluctant to go to bat for Amazon, with just under a quarter (24%) of those asked rating it as offering the best reductions around.
If our survey is anything to go by, BFCM seems to have lost its allure. Only 5% of American Prime members (and 4% of those who aren’t signed up) think that BFCM has the edge over Amazon’s offering. In Australia and the UK, those figures rise, but only ever so slightly.
Some people are a little more cynical about the whole thing. Around a third of those questioned stated that they see no difference between sales these days. Bad news for retailers, but good for our respondent’s bank balances.
That said, the audiences questioned by Cint still expressed an interested in trying to get more bang for their buck, with around half of everyone asked indicating that they’re prepared to delay purchasing goods in the run up to Prime Day in the hope that whatever they’re after has a hefty discount slapped on it come the 16th of July.
These are a few of my favorite things..
Given that Amazon has the means to send you everything from groceries to games, via gardening tools, garments, and gear stick shift knobs, we wanted to get an insight into the sort of purchases consumers are planning to make.
It’s worth noting that around a fifth of those questioned (18% in the US, 19% in the UK, 21% in Australia) have no intention of doing any shopping at all in the Prime Day sales.
For those who are looking to splash the cash and take advantage of the discounts on offer, electronics and computers lead the way. 40% of Americans and a third of British and Australian respondents are hoping to see decent reductions on TVs, laptops and the like when sale prices go live.
Spending habit similarities extended beyond the electronics aisle with respondents in all surveyed countries selecting the same three categories as their go-to when it comes to bagging a bargain:
- Health and Beauty (Australia 10 %, UK 11%, US 10%)
- Home, Garden, Pets and DIY (Australia 10%, UK 13%, US 7%)
- Clothes, Shoes, Jewelry and Accessories (Australia 8%, UK 4%, US 8%)
Interestingly, given Amazon’s initial proposition as a book-based business, reading material is very low down the list of priorities for Prime subscribers: just 7% of Australian respondents will be rooting around for discounts on books, a figure that drops to 5% in the UK and goes even lower in the US (3%).
Conclusion
As Amazon edges closer towards being the shop for everything (if not for everyone), Prime Day shows no signs of slowing down.
Are you expecting a deluge of Amazon-assisted deliveries during Prime Day? More of a brick and mortar shopper? Join the conversation on the Cint LinkedIn page.
Methodology
A ‘CintSnap’ is a snapshot into the minds of general consumers. The data featured was pulled using the Cint platform and leverages Cint’s programmatic research tech. A census demographic of approximately 300 consumers in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States was surveyed for each question within a 3-hour window on the 11th of July, 2024.
