Bloomberg reports that Amazon shoppers are more likely to order home goods and inexpensive gifts after the first day of the sale than laptops, TVs and other high-priced items.
According to Numerator, which monitors the stats, the average order value currently doesn’t exceed even $50 (it’s $46.44, to be more precise). That's more than 20% less than during July's Prime Day. The Numerator statistic was generated based on 19,512 orders from 9,500 users. According to Klover, Prime Early Access, which took place October 11-12, had lower sales than a similar summer sale.
Amazon, targeting Prime members, is holding two Prime Day for the first time in a year in hopes of boosting sales. However, analysts give the season the exact opposite assessment, calling it rather "lackluster".
And that isn't surprising, since consumers face the highest inflation in four decades, forcing them to cut spending significantly. According to Adobe Inc., while last year's online spending growth for November and December was 8.6%, this year it’s expected to rise by about 2.5%, which is $209.7 billion.
On the other hand, Jamil Ghani, Prime chief, confirmed on Bloomberg Television that consumers are indeed cutting costs without spending too much money because of inflation, which has affected everyone, but at this point he thinks comparisons to the July sale aren’t really appropriate, and it’s too early to draw conclusions.
Ghani also added that despite everything, Amazon is pleasantly surprised by the number of purchases made by Prime members, stressing that shoppers are guided not only by "needs" but by "wants" as well.
Kristin McGrath, who monitors and analyzes purchases at BlackFriday.com, noted that even fairly good prices on televisions and laptops have failed to sway users toward buying them. She also pointed out that laptops and TVs aren’t something users want to spend money on when they're not sure if they can afford a regular trip to the store.