With Echo Dot at Bat, Amazon Scores Prime Day Home Run

Author: David Jones / Source: E-Commerce Times

Amazon has hailed its third-annual Prime Day promotion as its single biggest global shopping event ever. The sales event, held earlier this week, reached US$1 billion in sales, according to some analyst estimates, surpassing year-ago sales by 60 percent and beating the company’s prior Black Friday and Cyber Monday records.

More members joined Prime on this year’s Prime Day than on any other single day in the company’s history, Amazon said, although it did not release any figures to back up that claim.

However, tens of millions of the company’s estimated 85 million Prime members made a purchase on the site on Prime Day — 50 percent more than a year ago, according to the company.

“First and foremost, Prime Day is a retention and acquisition tool for [Amazon’s] valuable Prime program, in addition to being their biggest opportunity to sell their own products to customers,” Clarus Commerce CEO Tom Caporaso told the E-Commerce Times.

Smart Speaker, Smart Sales

Amazon struck the jackpot with record sales of its Echo Dot mass market smart speaker — which sold better than any other product on offer from all manufacturers and across all categories — after it slashed its already low price from $49.99 to $34.99. Amazon sold seven times more Echo Dot devices on this Prime Day than on Prime Day 2016, it said.

Prime Day also marked the biggest single sales day for Amazon devices ever, with record sales of Echo smart speakers, Fire tablets and Kindle devices.

The…

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