Amazon Prime Day Sales Rose by 7.7% YoY, the Smallest Growth in Five Years

Prime Day 2021 generated the highest sales for Amazon so far but had less impact than the 2020 event. Although the eCommerce giant generated around $11.2bn in revenue from the products sold during the two-day shopping event, Prime Day sales growth significantly slowed down compared to recent years.

According to data presented by Stock Apps, Amazon Prime Day sales rose by 7.7% YoY in 2021, the smallest growth in five years.

Nearly Six Times Smaller Sales Growth than in 2020

Amazon Prime Day was launched in 2015 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Amazon’s founding and quickly turned into the biggest shopping day of the year for the online retailer, making it Black Friday’s summer counterpart.

Since July 2019, the shopping event runs for a total of 48 hours, and according to the official press release for Prime Day 2021, more than 250 million products were purchased by Prime members in 20 countries, making it Amazon’s largest online shopping event.

The Digital Commerce 360 data show that Amazon’s gross merchandise sales on Prime Day 2021 totaled $11.2 bn worldwide, a 7.7% jump in a year. However, that was far less than the sales growth recorded in 2020. Last year, Amazon Prime Day sales amounted to $10.4bn, a massive 45% YoY increase from $7.16bn in 2019.

However, that was still less than the 2019 event, which saw a staggering 71% sales increase. Statistics show that 2018 Prime Day sales totaled around $4.2bn, 74% more than in 2017.

1.3M Sellers Joined Amazon Market Place in the Last Year

Prime Day is a significant marketing opportunity for Amazon to sell its products, confirmed by the 62% sales share in 2018. This is particularly relevant in the computers and electronics segment, the most popular product category among Amazon Prime Day shoppers in the US that year.

Despite that, the Marketplace Pulse data showed that in 2020, around 1.3 million new sellers joined Amazon’s marketplace worldwide. Nearly 14% of them signed up through Amazon.com in the United States. The highest number of new third-party sellers in the United States was recorded in April when “stay-at-home” measures were imposed in several states.

Statistics show that Amazon.in contributed 12.1% of new marketplace sellers. Amazon.nl and Amazon.co.uk followed with 8.5% and 8.2% share, respectively.