Amazon Says Customers Saved ‘Billions’ During Extended Prime Day

Amazon says its longest Prime Day sale was also its biggest.

The eCommerce giant announced Saturday (July 12) that its yearly summer sale produced record sales and savings in its newly expanded four-day form.

“This year’s Prime Day event was bigger than any previous four-day period that included a Prime Day event, with record sales and more items sold during the four days,” the announcement said, also noting that customers saved “billions” during the event.

Among the event’s top sellers were “millions” of devices outfitted with Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa. The company said Alexa+, its personal assistant, and its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, and AI Shopping Guides were also helpful in guiding customers to deals and product information.

While Amazon did not provide dollar figures for the sale, figures from Adobe Analytics — cited by Reuters — showed online spending among U.S. retailers jumping 30%, or $24.1 billion, during the four-day stretch that coincided with Prime Day.

That’s slightly higher than Adobe’s earlier projection, which forecast that online spending would increase 28.4% year over year to reach $23.8 billion. That same projection also noted the importance of AI use for Amazon, predicting that retailers’ AI-driven Prime Day traffic would increase by 3,200%.

Amazon’s announcement came one day after the market research company Numerator released findings showing that the average household spend during the Prime Day sales event reached $156.37.

The average order size was $53.34, with close to two-thirds of the households that shopped during Prime Day placing two or more orders. The data also showed that two-thirds of the Prime Day items sold for under $20, 3% were over $100, and the leading categories were apparel and shoes, household essentials and home goods.

“Over half of shoppers purchased something they’d been waiting to buy until it went on sale,” the report said.

Amazon declined to comment on these figures when reached by PYMNTS.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last week about the way changes in Prime Day spending patterns — more than half of the sales during the first day came through a mobile device — reflect a “subtle but seismic” shift in the way consumers pay.

“The old model — credit card plus shipping address — is fading. Instead, new habits are being formed around wallets, embedded finance and more payments innovations,” that report said.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) orders for Prime Day, the report added, were up 13.6% year over year for Tuesday’s shopping event, according to data from Adobe.