Amazon’s inaugural Prime Day is being hailed as the biggest event in the retailer’s history, with sales trumping Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
The mega-sale event, which spanned June 15 and 16, saw a record uplift in sales for the retail giant.
The event, which includes two straight days of deals for members of Amazon Prime, saw sales surpass Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
As well as registering a record number of sales, the retailer also welcomed more new Prime members on July 15 than any other day of the year.
Meanwhile the event was the biggest ever for Amazon devices when comparing two-day periods, with Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick among the top-selling deals.
In total, the retailer sold more than 175 million items across eighteen countries, with shoppers saving a total of more than one billion American dollars throughout Prime Day.
“We want to thank Prime members all around the world,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO.
“Members purchased millions of Alexa-enabled devices, received tens of millions of dollars in savings by shopping from Whole Foods Market and bought more than $2 billion of products from independent small and medium-sized businesses. Huge thank you to Amazonians everywhere who made this day possible for customers.”
Prime Day Down Under
In Australia, Prime Day saw a huge uplift in traffic to the site, with visits to the site and transactions growing by over 50 per cent.
In total the site welcomed 2.7 million visitors, up 72.4 per cent year on year, according to research released last week from Hitwise.
Meanwhile the total value of the transactions hit $167.6K, with the most popular items being Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Finish Powerball All-in-1 Max Dishwasher Tablets, and Huggies Ultra Dry Nappies.
The Australian market differed substantially from other markets, Hitwise says, because Australian consumers were predominantly interested in household products.
“Even with the highest viewed products, Amazon Australia also saw a different mix in product demand. Only 4 out of the top 10 products were Amazon devices, with gaming consoles, wireless headphones by SoundPEATS, the latest Samsung Galaxy model and Philips’ multi-cooker rounding out the top 10,” the Hitwise report says.