CHICAGO (NewsNation) — The highly anticipated 48-hour sale bonanza known as Amazon Prime Day started Tuesday morning. Now in its eighth year, there’s a smorgasbord of deals for buyers of all sorts in what will be the online retailer’s biggest sales day until Black Friday.
This year Amazon is touting the fact that, in addition to top national brands, Prime members can shop deals from more small businesses than ever before.
One Amazon expert, however, says that at the end of the day, the retail giant is still the winner, as 60% of all sales on Amazon come from small businesses.
Still, there is a huge demand and interest from small businesses to get on Amazon’s storefront. The reason? Accessibility — it’s easy to shop on. Additionally, consumers are trained to look at Amazon first.
“Less than 5 years ago, Amazon passed Goggle as the No. 1 place where people start their product search,” Steven Pope, the founder of My Amazon Guy, told NewsNation correspondent Brooke Shafer Tuesday on “Rush Hour.”
“More than 60% of consumers will start their product search directly on the Amazon platform. And that’s the access that the sellers can get in touch with,” Pope continued.
But there’s a catch: Sales numbers posted during Prime Day are inflated relative to the rest of the year.
“The weeks before and after Prime Day are the weakest weeks of the year, and so it’s just going to look like a wash at the end of the day,” Pope said. “Amazon made up this made-up holiday called Prime Day, stuck it in the weakest time of the year, and then allowed sellers to take advantage of it. But it really won’t move the needle that much,” Pope said.
The reason for that is inflation and the state of the economy. Because the cost for everything is up, it’s that much harder for businesses to make money.
So if you are going to do some Amazon shopping for Prime Day and you want to support the thousands of small businesses on the site, make sure you go to the small business storefront.