Amazon holds Prime members' early access day to save sluggish sales

In order to boost sales, Amazon has a new way. This year, Amazon's shopping season comes earlier than in the past. Recently, Amazon announced that it will hold a Prime Early Access Sale from October 11th to 12th, officially kicking off Amazon's holiday shopping season.

Prime Early Access Sale is a two-day new shopping event exclusively for Prime members. The event covers many countries and regions around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, China, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey. Prime members in these regions will enjoy huge discounts on thousands of products including electronics, fashion, home, kitchen, pets, toys, etc., and will also receive exclusive offers when purchasing brands such as Peloton and New Balance.

At the same time, Amazon will also create the first Top 100 list on October 11, which will feature the top 100 most popular products in all categories. In addition, the holiday gift guide and Amazon's Toys We Love list will also be released, which will allow Prime members to better discover low-priced products and get holiday discounts in advance.

Perhaps part of the reason is, as Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani said, it is because Amazon has discovered that Prime members are looking for discounts during this time every year, so it has unprecedentedly launched the second membership discount event in a year.

But judging from the data, it is not that simple. According to the holiday retail sales forecast recently released by Deloitte, overall holiday retail sales will increase by 4% to 6% over last year to around $1.46 trillion, a significant slowdown from the 15% increase in the same period of 2021. It is clear that Amazon hopes to use high discounts to drive people's consumption and boost its year-end sales.

Various crises have put Amazon on edge.

Since the beginning of this year, due to inflation, the European energy crisis, supply chain restrictions and other issues that have led to a sharp increase in operating costs, Amazon has been forced to raise membership fees in the United States and Europe. The consequence of this move is that nearly 600,000 Prime members have been lost in the UK. On the other hand, sellers have chosen to flee Amazon after experiencing a series of additional fees such as FBA delivery fees, fuel and inflation surcharges.

Although significantly raising fees for buyers and sellers can ease operational pressure to a certain extent, Amazon will also face more challenges: members hope to get more and better shopping discounts and other services, and sellers also hope to see a surge in orders to match the rising fees.

Therefore, launching the membership discount activity again has become an excellent opportunity for Amazon to prove itself. Moreover, facing the upcoming holiday season, major competitors have already made sufficient preparations. Only by launching promotional activities earlier and faster can Amazon better stimulate consumers' shopping desire, drive its own sales growth, and make up for the losses in the first two consecutive quarters in the first half of the year.

Previously, Target said that in order to capture a larger share of holiday spending, its Target Deal Days discount event will begin on October 6, which is earlier than ever before, and the "price match guarantee" will last until December 24.

One thing that is clear is that although purchasing power is likely to be lower than last year, the giants will still do everything they can to compete for market share during the peak season. Sellers cannot slack off either. They must be prepared while ensuring account health and good reputation, manage inventory and warehousing as soon as possible, ensure sufficient inventory, determine promotional plans, and do their utmost to attract consumers to place orders quickly, which may impact sales peaks.