Amazon announced on Tuesday that its annual Prime Day sales event will return on July 16.
The promotion, which advertises a number of discounts and special offers to subscribers of the e-commerce giant’s Prime membership service, will begin at 3pm ET and run for 36 hours through July 17. That is a six-hour bump from last year’s 30-hour Prime Day event.
The announcement confirms the date Amazon briefly posted, seemingly by accident, to its UK website last month.
Amazon says it will promote various special offers in the lead-up to the official start of the event. On Tuesday, for instance, it’s pushing a $100 off deal on its Echo Show smart speaker and temporary discounts to its Amazon Music and Kindle Unlimited services. The company says it will include a free PC game download each day leading up to the event through its Twitch Prime service as well.
As expected, Amazon plans to use Prime Day to advertise several aspects of its quickly expanding business: the company says it will offer 10 percent off “hundreds” of items at Whole Foods stores and run a promotion in which users can enter a sweepstakes for a new Lexus by using the Alexa voice assistant. The company says it will offer more discounts for its own Echo, Fire TV, and Fire devices and introduce new devices from select companies as well.
Amazon said last year that Prime Day 2017 was the “biggest day” in company history, with sales surpassing traditional high-profile shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday at the time.
This year’s event will likely rival that success: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in April that Prime now has more than 100 million subscribers, and generally speaking, Prime members are still more active about shopping on Amazon than others. An October survey from research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners said that Prime members spend an average of $1,300 per year on the site, compared to $700 per year spent by non-Prime shoppers.
That said, if past Prime Days are any indication, the event should bring a handful of noteworthy deals surrounded by loads of junky items and advertising hype. Per usual, it’s wise for shoppers to use price checker sites to ensure the item they’re looking to buy is genuinely discounted.
This year’s event will also be more expensive for lapsed Prime members to participate in, as Amazon has raised the price of Prime’s annual and monthly subscription plans in recent months. First-time subscribers will still be able to sift through the offers with a free 30-day trial, however.
Be the first to comment