Insight Flash: CE data explores how Amazon’s Prime Day market share bump surpassed prior year gains to emerge the unchallenged champion of their high-profile sale period despite competitor promotions.

As Amazon’s Prime Day event garnered increasing attention during the pandemic, a number of the company’s peers held their own competing promotions, trying to capture a share of the shopping frenzy that typifies the event. Despite these efforts, however, Amazon still looks unchallenged as the champion of the high-profile sale period. Looking first at online market share, Amazon is the only name that has seen a consistent bump over the last 5 Prime Day periods, as measured over the prior week.

During this year’s Prime Day period, Amazon’s market share bump surpassed gains seen in prior years, rising +7% vs. the previous week. The previous peak occurred in summer 2022 at nearly +6%.

Amazon vs. Competitors Market Share Changes

Although Walmart has run competing promotions to Prime Day during all periods except Summer of 2022, its online operations have consistently given up the most market share during the event. Target has fared only slightly better over the same periods, seeing still-consistent but smaller losses in share.

While Amazon is unambiguously the prime beneficiary of the promotional cycle, the other players have seen mixed results from their efforts at competition. Best Buy’s online sales, with big discounts on high ticket items, fare well when judged on acceleration of year-over-year growth, prior week into sale week. This was especially true in 2020, when the home office buildout phenomenon was still running strong. Online furniture retailers such as Wayfair have been less successful in their efforts, with some years having seen deceleration in growth from the preceding week. Target experienced big accelerations in growth in 2020, 2021 and the first Prime Day cycle of 2022, but the sheen wore off in fall 2022 and in 2023.

Prime Day Period vs. Prior Week

* Amazon sales consist of the AMAZON MARKETPLACE and AMAZON.COM brands. Best Buy sales consist of the online operations of the BEST BUY brand. Overstock sales consist of the OVERSTOCK.COM brand. Target sales consist of the online operations of the TARGET brand. Wayfair sales consist of the WAYFAIR.COM brand. Walmart sales consist of the online operations of the WALMART (EX FUEL) brand. Prime Day Period is defined as the two days of the indicated Prime Day, plus the subsequent two days. Prior week is defined as the same four days of the preceding calendar week. The extended Prime Day Period is used as some merchants charge at time of shipment, which may trail promotional period itself.  

Consumer Edge is the leading provider of alternative data for consumer spending behavior, and the only provider of global revenue signals. If you’d like to benefit from using Transact US or other products for home furnishings, retail, and other industry data year-round to track trends and dynamics like these, reach out to insights@staging.consumer-edge.com.

Michael Gunther is the VP Head of Insights for the CEIC. Explore more of his insights here and follow him on LinkedIn.