What it means: The size and success of Amazon Prime Day

Prime Day, a faux summer holiday started by e-commerce giant Amazon, is underway for its ninth year.

We’ve collected news and analysis you should read about how the marathon shopping day became such a July mainstay, and what Amazon is setting its sights on next.

• Amazon wants to expand its global Prime membership this year. U.S. shoppers who subscribe to Prime reportedly spend around $2,000 on the site annually — four times more than non-members — and membership fees mean that the site keeps revenues high even when shoppers turn away from making purchases. Most Prime subscribers live in the U.S., and Amazon has turned towards global users in hopes of driving up its numbers. Prime Day will help reel them in: The event is responsible for more two-day signups than any other period in the year. — Axios
• Sales lag in summer months, so Amazon created its own holiday. Prime Day falls near the anniversary of the company’s first sale, and was pitched to Jeff Bezos following the success of Alibaba’s “Singles Day” sales. This year, the company is expecting around $8 billion in sales from the event, a jump from last year’s $7 billion. — Business Insider
• Alibaba’s “Single’s Day” sales event which falls on Nov. 11, is 2.5 times larger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday put together. Alibaba has been running the promotion since 2009, and other retailers have tried to match the company’s success. Sites like JD.com run similar promotions over a period of several days, but so far no retailer has seen the same success as Alibaba. — TechCrunch
• Amazon is hoping that Prime Day will pull it out of a sales slump. The company has seen single-digit growth this year following a pandemic-era sales boom, and the company’s cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is seeing record-low growth. — The Wall Street Journal

Prime Day can dictate the sales of other leading retailers. It has become an industry-wide shopping day, with other brands mimicking Amazon’s deals.

Other retailers could see sales jump as much as 40%, Axios reports, and Amazon itself will see a 243% boost.

The event will also help clear out old inventory ahead of the busy autumn sales season.