Amazon Prime Day is limited to those that have a membership to Prime and they use the day to predominantly sell their own products and devices at lower prices rather than focus on other brands. This year also sees the Prime Day deals spread from online to in-store with Amazon using their Whole Foods stores in the US to run in-store Prime members discounts.

Major retailers and brands seem to have now followed suit although none are limiting the offers to members/VIPs.

To name a few, Currys PC World have a 48 hour ‘Black Tag event’, eBay are offering 20% off on selected sellers and Halfords are offering an extra 10% off there Summer Sale for 48 hours only. Alternatively Superdry have used the 15th July as the launch day of their summer sale with discounts being applied online from midnight onwards, much like Amazon do.

Prime time for using behavioural science…

All of these are time sensitive offers and these brands are using the scarcity bias to make the consumer feel like we can’t miss out on the deal, after all we feel the effects of a loss more than a gain.

Amazon are very good at this and they are no strangers to creating theatre around shopping holidays, a strategy they call Retailtainment. This years Prime Day was launched with a concert in New York featuring mega stars like Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa. Nothing to do with the products they were selling, just a strategy to create awareness of the event and how special it was.

Has it worked? Probably. I’ve been eyeing up an Echo Show for a few months now…