Consumer Analytics

Another July, another Amazon Prime Day. With the e-tail leader already confirming this retail “holiday” will be back for a third time next July, let’s take a look back at the 2016 edition.   While a lot went well for Amazon during Prime Day this year, we may as well start with the biggest blunder. Namely, the widespread checkout issues that occurred during the morning hours. A glitch caused some U.S. and U.K. shoppers to have difficulties loading items into their shopping carts and/or making purchases.  

Consumers who purchase at off-price retail outlets are a growing group.   According to the latest Checkout Tracking data from global information company The NPD Group, two-thirds of all consumers shop at off-price retailers. Checkout Tracking analysis, which analyzes receipts and follows consumer purchasing behavior, also shows off-price buyers represent 75% of apparel purchases across all retail channels.  

Having brokered the sale of street-front retail real estate on 101st Street and Third Avenue in New York for $2.2 million, RKF declared the unofficial rule of placing prime retail locations below 96th Street in Manhattan to be null and void.  

Specialty apparel retailer The Children’s Place Inc. is partnering with marketing and loyalty solutions provider Alliance Data Systems Corp. to launch a new private label credit card.  

Mobile commerce has become almost universal in the retail industry, but competency levels are less uniform.   According to a new study of 250 marketing and IT professionals, including 95 retailers, from digital solutions provider PointSource, “The State of the Mobile Experience,” 91% of retail companies have a mobile site and 84% have a mobile app.  

The Pokemon Go app has exploded in popularity since its July 5 release in the U.S. 

Everyone loves to talk about pizza, and Pizza Hut is turning that tendency into a consumer touchpoint.  

So far, it appears that some early Prime Day performance issues on the Amazon.com site gave way to much stronger results as the day continued.   According to multiple media reports, a glitch was causing problems for some U.S. and U.K. consumers attempting to check out their Amazon purchases the morning of Tuesday, July 12. Numerous shoppers tweeted their frustrations using hashtags such as #PrimeDay and #PrimeDayFail.  

While Amazon Prime Day got off to a bit of a rocky start, performance appears to be improving as the day goes on.   According to analysis from Clavis Insight, consumer electronics is the most popular category among Prime Day “spotlight deals,” promoted at the top of the page as especially in-demand items. As of 10 a.m. ET Amazon had run 21 spotlight deals, almost half of which were consumer electronics. At the same on the 2015 edition of Prime Day, Amazon had only posted 10 spotlight deals.  

Shoppers age 14-19, known as “Gen Z,” are not as hard to reach as some retailers think.