Amazon Prime Day 2021 Growth Falls Compared To 2020

Amazon Prime Day 2021 has now come to an end. As we know, Amazon Prime Day 2021 was held from Monday, June 21 to Tuesday, June 22.

Prime Day was available to Prime members in the US, UK, UAE, Spain, Singapore, Netherlands, Mexico, Luxembourg, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, China, Canada, Belgium, Austria, Australia, Turkey, and Brazil.

Overall sales of Amazon Prime Day 2021 were modest compared with growth in previous events.   

According to estimates by Adobe Analytics, Digital Commerce 360, Morgan Stanley, and others, Prime Day 2021 grew just 5-10% compared to last year’s October event. Before 2020, Prime Day was expanding 50% or more every year.

Let's take a look at the data.

 

BANK OF AMERICA ANALYSTS SAY:

“Amazon did disclose that 250 million items were sold, which represents a 20% two-year [compound annual growth rate] from 175 million items sold in Prime Day 2019, but likely limited growth vs. 2020,” Bank of America analysts Justin Post and Michael McGovern wrote in a note to investors. “Given the shorter period of time since the last Prime Day, the lack of new countries added, and the lack of new disclosures, we believe this was a relatively lower growth Prime Day vs. prior years.”

Overall, Prime members purchased more than 250 million items worldwide during the 2021 event, Amazon says.

Best-selling categories worldwide included tools, beauty, nutrition, baby care, Amazon devices, electronics, apparel, and housewares, the e-commerce giant says.

However, Amazon doesn’t disclose total Prime Day sales, but Post and McGovern estimate that Prime Day 2021 gross merchandise volume came in at $9.55 billion, up just 7% from last year.

By comparison, they estimate 2020 Prime Day gross merchandise volume grew 54% year over year.

The fall in growth may be due to inventory and product visibility issues.

 

Online Marketplace Pulse Statement:

Inventory issues that limited brands’ ability to offer discounts, as well as Amazon’s warehouse restrictions, have meant that while the supply side of Prime Day has continued to increase (millions of deals this year), many weren’t the deals shoppers were anticipating. Prime Day continues to focus on quantity over quality of deals. 

Despite having millions of deals, however, Amazon has not improved how shoppers discover them.

Prime Day gets bigger every year, and it is an underwhelming shopping event.

Know more about Amazon from Amazon Seller Talk.