Amazon’s Prime Day is almost upon us and it is shaping up to be another record-setting event with close to one million deals available June 21 through June 22.  The customary two-day event period will see several Prime Day deals go live at 3.00 am ET.

This year’s Prime Day may seem earlier when compared to last year’s pandemic postponed event and it is a month earlier than the pre-2020 timing in July. As per Amazon, the primary reasons for holding the event earlier this year are potential transportation slowdowns in July and the risk of divided customer attention due to the Summer Olympics.

Prime Day 2020 got a huge head start due to the pent-up savings from the 11 months since COVID outbreak. Founded in 2015, last year’s event set new records for small and medium businesses. Overall, the shoppers spent more than $3.5 billion on products from these companies. Amazon crossed the $10 billion mark for its Prime Day sales, a substantial 45% increase over the last year. You can read our detailed analysis of the 2020 event in this blog. Its will be interesting to see how Prime Day fares this year given that overall US is less constrained by social restrictions and ecommerce seems to be booming. Analysts are already predicting record breaking sales.

McFadyen Digital will be tracking the event and we will be reporting on the key findings in part 2 of this blog later in the next week. In the meantime, here are some trends to watch out for that will help both brands and consumers to leverage this big shopping festival.

1) Look Out for Amazon Branded Products

If past events are any indicators, it’s no brainer that Amazon heavily promotes its own products during this time. If Echo smart speakers, Kindle e-readers, Echo Buds, Fire tablets, Fire video streaming devices are on your shopping list, this is the best time to grab them. Amazon has expanded to more than 100 brands across furniture and apparel so look out for that.

2) SMBs Still A Focus

Last Prime Day Amazon spent a whooping $18 billion supporting small and medium sized businesses and it will be no different this year. Amazon uses Prime Day to grow its reputation as small business friendly organization.

3) Shop Around

While technically Prime Day is an Amazon event, but competition has since long countered Prime Day with their own big sales. For instance, Target runs a competing sale around the same time. Best Buy, Walmart, amongst other are likely to offer strongly competitive sales events of their own. So do look around if your favourite product is not an Amazon exclusive.

4) Fewer Deals of Home Improvement/ Garden Products

The COVID pandemic gave rise to a DIY boom that has resulted in shortage of certain items like paint, timber, and cement. The pandemic has also put a spanner on the functioning of global supply chain, so shopper looking to score a deal on this category of products might be let down sometimes.

5) Whole Foods Deals

For past three years Amazon has gifted Prime members who shop at Whole Foods a $10 credit that can be redeemed on Prime Day. This year too Whole Foods will play a big role, so look out for Whole Foods discounts on seafood, meat, organic produce, and more. Even if you are not a Whole Foods fan, it still makes sense to shop there leading up to the Prime Day just for the savings alone.

6) Tools to Price-Check

In the deluge of deals don’t forget to price check, its easy to get tricked by fake price drops. For instance, appliance industry is infamous for jacking up prices ahead of the big shopping days to offer seemingly massive discounts. Price checking on Amazon has become a breeze with number of tools available for instance Camelcamelcamel, a free Amazon price tracker monitors millions of products and alerts you when prices drop, helping you decide when to buy. There are others like Shopbrain and Shopsavvy that can tell you if competing retailer offers a better price even though they don’t track price history.

In the next part of this blog, we will be doing a detailed analysis on third party sales performance, key metrics across various categories, and the effect Prime Day was likely to have on the upcoming holiday season. Stay tuned.