Amazon Prime Day 2019 Smashes Records, Taking 87% of Competing Big Box Retailers’ Sales

Average customer spend per hour grew 35% from 2018 to 2019

Key Takeaways:

• Amazon Prime Day has varied every year by start time and duration. 2019 was 48 hours long and began at 3am ET, 2018 was 36 hours and began at 3pm ET, and 2017 was 30 hours long and began at 9pm ET.
• Average hourly spend for Prime Day 2019 beat 2017’s by 55%
• Despite sales held by competing retailers, Amazon maintained about 87% market share during Prime Day 2019
• Prime Day 2019 hit peak sales at 1pm ET on day one, Prime Day 2018 hit peak sales 5pm ET, and Prime Day 2017 hit peak sales 10pm ET.

Another Prime Day has come and gone, and despite the increased competition from other retailers this time around, the challenges to Amazon’s dominance had little impact. Last year, Edison Trends analyzed both Amazon Prime Day sales as well as Target’s strategy to combat Prime Day. Here is what this year’s sales landscape looked like during Amazon Prime Day.

How did this year’s Amazon Prime Day sales compare to previous years’?

Figure 1a: Chart shows estimated sales in the first 24 hours of Amazon Prime Day compared year over year, 2017 through 2019, according to Edison Trends. Data have been scaled so that the highest hourly spend is set to 100. The time periods represented are: July 10, 2017 ET at 9pm through July 11, 2017 at 9pm ET, July 16, 2018 at 3pm ET through July 17, 2018 at 3pm ET, and July 15, 2019 at 3am ET through July 16, 2019 at 3am ET. The data for this analysis comes from over 80,000 online transactions.

Amazon has started its Prime Day sales at a different time of day each of the last three years; Prime Day 2017 started at 9pm ET; in 2018, it started at 3pm ET, and in 2019 at 3am ET. Unsurprisingly, these time differences have led to very different spending patterns in the initial hours of the sale. 2018 had the best customer spending in the first seven hours, given that it started at 3pm ET in 2018 versus 9pm in 2017 and 3am 2019. In fact, 2019’s start time led to a much lower start than the two previous years — spending during the first 7 hours of 2019 was 45% lower than in 2018 and 6% lower than in 2017.

However, once we look past the first seven hours, spending during the first 24 hours of Prime Day 2019 eclipses spending during the first 24 hours of the previous two years — perhaps suggesting that the earlier start time was ultimately effective. Spend peaked at around 1pm ET for 2019, around 5pm ET in 2018, and 10pm ET in 2017.

Figure 1b: To compensate for the different durations of Amazon Prime Day sales year over year, chart shows year-over-year increase in sales based on estimated average hourly consumer spend, according to Edison Trends. Data have been scaled so that the highest average hourly spend is set to 100. The time periods represented are: July 10, 2017 ET at 9pm through July 12, 2017 at 3am ET, July 16, 2018 at 3pm ET through July 18, 2018 at 3am ET, and July 15, 2019 at 3am ET through July 17, 2019 at 3am ET. The data for this analysis comes from over 120,000 online transactions, in the U.S.A.

Prime Day keeps growing in length, from 30 hours in 2017 to 36 in 2018 and, now, 48 hours in 2019. Since the changing length of the event makes it difficult to compare one year to another, rather than examine total customer spend, here we average customer spend per hour for each year. Doing so reveals just how much of a success Prime Day 2019 was. In 2019, customers spent an average of 35% more per hour of the sale than in 2018, and 55% more than in 2017.

How did Prime Day 2019 sales perform hourly?

Figure 2: Chart shows estimated Amazon Prime Day 2019 sales by hour, according to Edison Trends. Data have been scaled so that the highest hourly spend is set to 100. The time period represented is July 15, 2019 at 3am ET through July 17, 2019 at 3am ET. The data for this analysis comes from over 60,000 online transactions, in the U.S.A. The time period represented is July 15, 2019 at 3am ET through July 17, 2019 at 3am ET

Prime Day 2019 hit its peak during the 1pm ET hour, followed by the 10am ET hour in second, and the 12pm ET hour third — all during the first day of the sale. The lowest time for sales was during the 5am ET hour on day 2, and interestingly, Amazon’s sales during the second 24 hours of the event were 26% lower than during the first 24. Overall, however, sales increased during 2019 by 78% over Prime Day 2018, but this year the sale was 48 hours instead of last year’s 36 — which played a role in this increase.

How much did competitors’ sales affect Prime Day 2019?

Figure 3: Chart shows estimated market share of online consumer spending during Prime Day 2019, compared between Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. The time period represented is July 15, 2019 at 3am ET through July 17, 2019 at 3am ET. The data for this analysis comes from over 60,000 online transactions, in the U.S.A. Due to rounding, numbers may not equal 100%.

Various other retailers waited for the announcement of Prime Day 2019 before announcing their own sales during the same time period. Retailers including eBay, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target all hoped that the “halo effect” of Prime Day would help boost their own sales. However, Amazon still raked in the vast majority of online customer spend during the two-day duration of Prime Day, with an 87% market share against the other retailers. The closest competitors Amazon had during the 48 hour Prime Day window were Walmart and eBay, both at around 4%, followed by Best Buy at 3% and Target at 2%.

As the market evolves, we will continue to stay on top of the latest trends. To learn more about how Edison Trends can help your business, contact us at bizdev@edison.tech. For more up-to-date insights in the e-commerce space, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter at @EdisonTrends.

*The data shown is based on a sample of anonymized and aggregated e-receipts from millions of consumers in the United States.