Over third of US households shopped with Amazon on Prime Day

Research estimates that spend is up over 60% for Amazon’s Prime Day promotion and the e-commerce giant will be the leading retail success story of the 2020 holiday period

Credit: Image by josemiguels from Pixabay

According to new estimates, 36% of US households shopped with Amazon on Prime Day 2020, up from 23% in 2019. Survey data of verified Prime Day buyers further indicates that nearly one-third (31%) reported they were doing it for the first time and that nine in 10 Prime Day buyers plan to shop on Amazon again before the holiday period ends.

Market research company Numerator analysed the five days from Thanksgiving through to the following Monday, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday and looked at more than 43,000 verified Prime Day purchases alongside survey data. 

They found that although individual order sizes were down, consumers spent more, and placed more orders in total, on Prime Day. Average spend per order fell to $54.64 in 2020 from $58.91 in 2019 but consumers spend an estimated $7.4B at Amazon on Prime Day, up 64% from $4.5B in 2019 driven by more than 135 million orders, up from 76 million in 2019.

They also found that more consumers were multi-trip Prime Day participants. More than three in five Prime Day buyers (61.8%) placed two or more orders on Prime Day 2020, up from 57.6% in 2019.

They found that the retail giants in the US are the primary challengers for Amazon, led by Walmart, which had an overall household penetration of 39.2% for non-grocery goods (Walmart brick-and-mortar 36.7%, Walmart.com 4.8%) during the five-day period. Amazon followed at 29.6%. They predict that Amazon is expected to close Walmart's 10-point lead, in part because of the success of Prime Day 2020.

According to Numerator survey data, the number of people planning to shop on Walmart.com for holiday gifts is up (48% in 2020 vs. 39% in 2019), with a similar situation for Target.com, which can expect an increase in penetration (39% in 2020 vs. 29% in 2019). However in stores sales are predicted to fall, with Walmart customers expecting to shop in store falling to 46% in 2020 from 61% in 2019 and 34% in 2020 from 47% in 2019 for Target.

This is drive by an overall move to greater e-commerce spend as a result of COVID-19. In the survey 65% of verified holiday buyers said they expected to shop differently for Christmas or Hanukkah in 2020 than they have in years past. Fifty-four percent said they expected to do all or most of their holiday shopping online, more than double the 22% level in 2019. Even more strikingly for Black Friday, 39% of consumers are planned to buy gifts on the day but only 34% intend to go in-store, while 90% plan to shop online.

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