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Amazon Prime Big Deals Days Recap Amazon Prime Big Deals Days in October were a big hit. They didn’t match Amazon Prime Day in July this year, but they did outperform all of their previous sales promotions. Average order size was $53.47, 20% larger than Big Deals Days in 2022, but below Prime Day average order size of $54.05, according to initial analysis by Numerator. Average household spend was $124.09, up 12% from 2022 but 20% less than average household spend during Prime Day 2023. Staple items like batteries and groceries moved the most volume, but Apple products, including AirPods Pro, iPads and Apple watches, generated the most revenue. Other Numerator Findings: The typical Prime Big Deal Days shopper is a high-income suburban female age 35 to 44. Almost all (95%) of Prime Big Deal Days shoppers knew it was Prime Big Deal Days before visiting Amazon and making their purchase. Eighty-five percent of surveyed Prime Big Deal Days shoppers said the sale was their primary reason for shopping, and 72% said they also shopped on Prime Day in July. More than half (55%) compared prices at other retailers before making their Amazon purchases and also placed two or more separate orders. Roughly three in 10 Prime Big Deal Days shoppers expect to or already had shopped at other pre-holiday sales, including Target Circle Week and Walmart’s Holiday Kickoff. About six in 10 expect to shop on Black Friday (59%) or Cyber Monday (57%), as well. Piggy-Backing on Amazon Prime Big Deals Days Several retailers offered lots of deals of their own during Big Deals Days. Home Depot offered 40% off on many major appliances and Walmart billed their promotion, which started a day earlier and ran a day later, as their Holiday Kickoff event. Walmart has not released sales results yet. Ace ran their special Rewards Members Only Days for the fifth consecutive year, offering exclusive online deals and special bonus offers for Ace Rewards Members available only online. Members could access exclusive deals and events, earn points on purchases, and qualify for free delivery from their local participating Ace store with online purchases of $50 or more. Inside Consumer Spending Consumers spending has made a seismic shift over the last year from goods-oriented to services oriented. The top four categories on a trailing 12-month basis are (in descending order) bars & restaurants (+9.2%), ecommerce (+8.4%), drugstores (+8.3%) and motor vehicles and parts (+6.2%). All four of these categories notched impressive monthly gains of at least 0.8% in September. The stay-at-home categories that flourished during the pandemic are the weak spots. Some top losers over the past year are: furniture and home furnishings (-5.9%), building material and garden stores (-4.0%) and sporting goods (-2.1%). All three of these categories were flat or down for the month of September. However, the most recent GDP report which provided a first look at Q3 GDP showed that consumer spending was surprisingly robust and more evenly split between goods and services. Cracking Down on Fake Reviews Two people in China were recently found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison for brokering fake Amazon reviews. The verdicts were the result of an investigation by local law enforcement and a criminal referral supported by Amazon, who said they’ve blocked more than 200 million suspected fake reviews from their website and, as of August, has taken action against 147 fraudsters across China, Europe, and the US. Fake reviews are far more than just an annoyance. The World Economic Forum, which found that 4% of all online reviews are fake, said bogus online reviews influence $791 billions of ecommerce spending annually in the US. Statistics indicate that roughly 95% of consumers read reviews before they buy anything and 94% of consumers have avoided a company due to a bad review. Now Amazon, along with review sites Glassdoor and Trustpilot and travel companies Expedia Group, Booking.com and Tripadvisor announced that they're launching a coalition that aims to protect access to "trustworthy consumer reviews" worldwide. The companies said the coalition is a result of conversations that came out of a "Fake Reviews" conference organized by Tripadvisor last year in San Francisco. The coalition plans to meet in December in Brussels. Consumer Reports has some tips on how to spot fake online reviews, including checking with a site like Fakespot, which uses an algorithm to evaluate the quality of customer reviews for products being sold at major retailers. Some giveaways include clusters of very positive reviews all posted on the same day, reviews that use identical phrasing and a reviewer who gives five stars and uses similar language for different reviews. Many people don’t know you can click on to the reviewer to see their history. Also look for a Verified Purchase tag on a review, which signals that Amazon confirmed that the reviewer paid for the product and bought it through the website. Amazon Leading the Robotic Revolution Ecommerce will grow 10% this holiday to $270 billion dollars, according to Deloitte, and Amazon will deliver 13.5 million packages every day. Amazon is testing two new technologies to increase automation in their warehouses, including a trial of a humanoid robot. The humanoid robot, called Digit, is bipedal and can squat, bend and grasp items using clasps that imitate hands. Digit will initially be used to help employees consolidate totes that have been emptied of items and can reportedly work in areas of the warehouse that are not accessible by humans. Amazon says Sequoia is capable of stocking 75% faster and delivering orders 25% faster than humans but are not replacing people. Robots are used to do the tough manual work while people do the scanning and other jobs that are better-suited to humans. Towers of Sequoia robots are moved through warehouses by Hercules, which looks like a big Rumba robotic vacuum. The robots being deployed drive themselves onto shipping pallets and send themselves to fulfillment centers all over the world to go to work. Amazon has deployed robots in their warehouses for more than a decade, mainly to move inventory to waiting employees. That system, which starts with humans stuffing inventory items into mesh shelving, is undergoing a transformation to container-based storage, which more easily allows robotic arms and other automated technology to sort and pick items. Once a customer puts something in their online cart, the system instantly figures out the best warehouse, delivery center and way to get the product to the customer, which was demonstrated in real time on the Today Show one morning. Amazon insists the two intelligent robotic systems are creating jobs, not costing them, allowing machines to take over mundane/dangerous jobs and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in 700 new, more skilled categories. © Robert Bosch Tool Corporation. All rights reserved, no copying or reproducing is permitted without prior written approval.
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