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Amazon Prime Day is finally here and so is the online summer shopping frenzy. This year, big box retailers are stretching out their sales events alongside an extended version of Prime Day.
For the first time Amazon is hosting a four-day Prime summer event from July 8–11. Prime Day usually lasts two days—last year it ran from July 16–17. Walmart is also hosting its Walmart Deals sale for six days to July 13, instead of the usual four. Meanwhile, Target has not increased the number of days for Circle Week scheduled from July 6 through July 12, but it will overlap with Prime Day like it has in years past. Kohl’s is also running its summer deals from July 7 to July 10 in direct competition with Prime Day.
Retail analysts who spoke with Retail Brew said for retailers the goal is simple: beat last year by putting more stuff on sale for longer periods or slash prices even deeper. The focus is also on communicating value beyond price to attract and retain customers. However, they warned that stretching summer sales might water down holiday shopping. Put together, the impact of Prime Day has led to an increase in the number of retailers holding their own specials. Amazon first hosted Prime Day in July 2015.
Discussing why Walmart and Amazon are starting to expand these sales periods, Brad Jashinsky, director analyst at Gartner, told Retail Brew that it gives third-party marketplace sellers more time to react, regardless of whether they are seeing strong demand or not. This year, Amazon sellers are being more cautious about how they discount their catalog even for Prime Day, with growing concern around pricing due to tariffs.
“Even if the consumer demand is slower, by expanding the number of days, [Amazon will] still be able to say that it was bigger than last year,” Jashinsky said.
Gartner data showed that 71% of holiday shoppers expect US trade policies to make their winter holiday shopping more expensive this year. Broadly speaking, Jashinsky said, “it’s an opportunity for these retailers to have more time to message the consumers, and also for shoppers to have more time to budget and consider that.”
“I think communicating value beyond just the price is the biggest opportunity there,” Jashinsky said. “Like thinking around these deals less about one time, but how do you take a deal shopper and turn them into an ongoing customer?”
For Sucharita Kodali, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, the reason for an extended summer sales is more cut and dried: boosting sales performance.
“When companies need to perform at least as well as last year, they will increase the length of their sales, they increase the number of items that are on sale, or they deepen the discounts on the items they have,” she explained. “It sounds like this is just one of those levers they’re using to try to improve the performance of the sales.”
But on the flip side, “the more sales you have, the more you pull forward transactions,” Kodali pointed out. According to Gartner, 38% of holiday shoppers reported purchasing a holiday gift during a seasonal summer sale last year.
Nonetheless, there is a certain halo effect riding on Prime Day—eMarketer projects that Amazon will likely walk away with three quarters of US e-commerce sales in 2025.
Ultimately, Kodali said, for big box retailers, this summer is about keeping numbers as good as last year or compensating for those not-so-great numbers on their books: “These deals are being offered to try to make some of that up, potentially, and some of it can be just to maintain market share versus Amazon.”