(NewsNation) — Amazon is touting its single largest sales day in company history following its first Prime Day of 2023.
During the annual two-day sales event, Amazon Prime members can get exclusive deals. This year, members purchased more than 375 million items worldwide, according to a news release.
“We’re proud to offer additional value for members through exclusive deals events like Prime Day,” Amazon CEO Doug Herrington said in a statement. “Thank you to our Prime members for continuing to shop in our store, and to our employees and independent sellers around the world who delivered for customers this Prime Day.”
As in years past, the e-commerce giant did not reveal how much money it earned during 2023 Prime Days on July 11 and 12. But those two days turned out to be a large online shopping day in general: Adobe Analytics data showed total U.S. online sales reached $12.7 billion, which is up 6.1% compared to a year ago.
Amazon boasted offering more deals this year than any past Prime Day event, which Jacob Palmer, senior director of content operations at BestReviews.com, said helped boost its sales.
“Amazon really brought it this year,” Palmer, who has been covering Prime Day since 2018, said. “That’s what made it really pop this year, is how effective Amazon was in terms of getting these huge name brands that are motivating to people.”
BestReviews data shows people use Prime Day to “splurge” on goods they don’t want to pay full price for, Palmer said, so it was a smart move for Amazon to partner with brands that sell these big-ticket items, such as Apple, Dyson or Ray-Ban.
These deals, combined with people seeking out ways to save money over the last year because of inflation, created a “huge shopping day,” Palmer said.
Can Amazon replicate this success next year?
“The short answer is yes,” Palmer said. “Amazon showed that they can keep moving and keep iterating on this.”
Now something to look out for is whether Amazon will do another Prime Early Access Sale in October, as it did in 2022.
The company says there are more than 200 million paid Prime members in 25 countries. In the U.S., it costs $14.99 for Prime for the general public.
