Survey: 36% of shoppers made purchases on Prime Day
The third annual Amazon Prime Day attracted more shoppers than ever, with many attracted by personalized marketing efforts.
Thirty-six percent of respondents confirmed they made a purchase on Amazon Prime Day in a survey from Periscope by McKinsey, which conducted online research with U.S. shoppers to explore their attitudes and actions regarding the online giant's mega-sale. This was a substantial increase on the 22% who said they had actively shopped for Prime Day deals in 2016.
Interestingly, 34% of respondents were not aware of Prime Day last year. As to what motivated them to shop the event this year, 12% said that having received more personalized marketing messages from Amazon incentivized them to shop more. And 26% said this year they had encountered offers in more of the categories they were interested in shopping in.
Asked how their shopping behaviors had changed compared to last year's Prime Day, 12% of respondents said they had shopped across more categories in this year's event with a further 7% admitting to spending more money.
When asked to evaluate what most influenced their decision to shop on Amazon Prime Day, more than half (54%) of respondents said their priority was to check out discounts on items they already planned to buy. A further 28% were less discriminating, preferring to hunt down and evaluate the best promotions and discounts available across multiple product categories.
At the same time, a significant number of shoppers expressed skepticism about the benefits to them of buying something on Prime Day. Almost one-third (31%) of respondents stated that promotions are never on products they are interested in and, as a result, they did not engage with the event. A further 19% went on to say they viewed Prime Day as a "marketing trick" and that, in their opinion, pre-event price inflation was being employed to make deals on the day seem more appealing to shoppers.
Asked if they shop for discounts on Black Friday, 44% of respondents said this event had no appeal for them -- a finding which indicates that, as Prime members, Prime Day was the motivating factor that attracted these consumers to open their wallets.
“While flash sales have become a fixture of online retail, enticing shoppers to part with their money using a combination of limited time, limited quantities and great deals is no longer enough to drive customers to buy on the day,” said Brian Elliott, managing partner of Periscope By McKinsey. “As these findings demonstrate, there's more to a successful flash sale than discounting some items or starting a countdown clock. To maximize the impact of time-limited online shopping events, retailers and brands need to use even more data analytics solutions to deliver an optimized shopping experience.”