Amazon’s decision this year to expand Prime Day from two days to four days may have backfired—as it appears shoppers used the extra time to look for better deals at a major competitor, Bloomberg reports.
Credit and debit card transaction data from Bloomberg Second Measure, a consumer analytics platform, found that spending on Walmart’s competing weeklong sales event grew 24%, or six times faster, than Amazon Prime Day’s annual growth.
- In addition, the platform found that 8% of Prime Day customers also shopped online at Walmart, which is up from 5% in 2024.
And Walmart wasn’t the only competitor to drive sales around Prime Day. In what could be a clear case of a rising tide lifting all boats, Adobe Analytics found that overall e-commerce sales were up 30.3% year over year over the four-day period, while sales at Amazon alone were up just 4.9%.
- The e-commerce giant also had a bit of a slower start this year, with Day 1 sales down 41% from the year before, per Momentum Commerce—though Amazon disputed the accuracy of the data.
Some experts are calling this effect the “Prime Week” phenomenon.
Amazon, for its part, said this year marked its “Biggest Prime Day event ever,” emphasizing the number of deals on offer. “This year’s extended Prime Day event delivered incredible savings to our members across millions of deals,” Doug Herrington, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Stores, said in a statement.
The backdrop for these deals, however, is that Amazon raised prices on 1,200 low-cost essential items in the last five months, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, an analysis which the company notably called “flawed.”
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