Amazon Prime Day estimated to have broken $12b record

Amazon Prime Day kicked off this week with the two day sales event running from Tuesday through to Wednesday.

While Amazon hasn’t revealed total sales from the event, it has said that the first 24 hours of Prime Day marked the “single largest sales day in company history.” In a blog post on Amazon, the company wrote, “Prime members purchased more than 375 million items worldwide and saved more than $2.5 billion on millions of deals across the Amazon store, helping make it the biggest Prime Day event ever.”

Last year, according to Adobe Digital Economy Index data, Prime Day 2022 sales reached just shy of $12 billion at $11.9 billion USD.

This year, Adobe Analytics estimates the event raked in a record breaking $12.7 billion USD.

Numerator is yet to release its Full Prime Day 2023 recap report, but ran a live tracker throughout the event and an early read of the data shows the average order size was $54.05 USD, which was up just under $2 from $52.26 on last year. However, 65 percent of households shopping Prime Day placed 2+ separate orders, bringing the average household spend to roughly $155.67 USD.

Reflecting the reduction in discretionary spending, top categories shoppers said they purchased were home goods at 28 percent, household essentials at 26 percent and apparel & shoes at 24 percent.

Unsurprisingly, according to Numerator’s data, 52 percent of Prime Day shoppers say they purchased items they’d been holding off on buying until they were on sale.

“In an event typically dominated by electronics, we instead saw many shoppers stocking up on everyday essentials like pet food or pantry staples. It seems many used the event to save on their standard purchases or held off on buying larger ticket items until the sale came around,” said Amanda Schoenbauer, Numerator Analyst.

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