One Demographic Could Make or Break Amazon Prime Day This Year

Youth, goes that somewhat head-scratching saying, belongs to the young.

And to that we might add: Amazon Prime Day belongs to the young, too.

You no doubt know that the latest iteration of the mega, multi-day promotion looms this week. And readers of this space know, too, that Amazon and Walmart are competing ferociously for dominance, or at least some share gains, in critical consumer categories spanning everything from electronics to groceries.

Any forward-thinking merchant or platform realizes that though baby boomers have a significant amount of purchasing power at hand, the younger cohorts have years of work/earnings/disposable income at hand. That makes their loyalty a key strategic goal as events like Amazon Prime Day and Walmart+ Weekend fight over each and every checkout.

A few stats stand out from our latest study previewing some of the divisions and loyalties evident for Walmart+ and Amazon Prime members. In the recently-released Walmart+ Weekend: Prime Rival Or Trip To The Grocery Store? report, the data shows that the past may be a prologue: The experience last year may spur consumers to stick with what they know this year, especially amid an inflationary environment the likes of which has not been seen in decades.

Read more: Walmart+ Weekend: Prime Rival Or Trip To The Grocery Store?

As we found this time around, respondents who participated in both Walmart+ Weekend 2022 and Prime Day 2021, shoppers across all age groups agreed that Prime Day had better deals than Walmart+ Weekend. Among millennials, 38% said Prime Day had better deals, versus 26% for Walmart+ Weekend. In fact, all cohorts with the exception of Gen Z seemed to embrace Amazon’s signature promotional event over Walmart’s (in that case, 40% said Walmart+ offered the better deals vs. about 28% who favored Amazon).

Huge Installed Base

Other data reinforces just how much firepower is waiting in Amazon’s sizable installed base. Earlier PYMNTS reports have noted that as many as 166 million consumers in the U.S. are Amazon Prime members, which equates to more than double that of any other mass membership club, and notably outpaces the roughly 38 million Walmart+ members.

As for those millennials, it’s important to observe that, as we found in a recent New Reality Check: The Paycheck to Paycheck Report, 70% of millennials live paycheck to paycheck.

But dig a bit deeper, and we find that the younger generations, as recently as May, had significant savings in hand, which indicates that Prime Day may see a surge in spending. As detailed in the chart below, millennials and bridge millennials have some of the healthiest savings across all demographics – especially if they’d not been living paycheck to paycheck. Even the hardest hit among the millennial cohorts had roughly $3,000 in the bank – which scales to five figures if they were not living paycheck to paycheck.

The urge to splurge may continue unabated this week, giving Amazon a boost from the youth.

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