Amazon Prime Day

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What is Amazon Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day is a two-day, mid-summer sales event that Amazon.com offers exclusively to Amazon Prime subscribers. According to Amazon, this year’s Prime Day, which was held July 16-17, 2024, was the company’s most successful shopping event ever.

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What is Amazon Prime Day?

Key Takeaways

  • Prime Day offers some of the deepest discounts of the year across almost every product category.
  • Only Amazon Prime members can access Prime Day deals. If you’re not already a member, you’ll need to sign up for a paid membership or start a free trial to participate.
  • Many Prime Day deals are available for a short time or while supplies last.
  • Prime Day promotions often include access to exclusive product launches, entertainment premieres, and special promotions for other Amazon services.
  • If you are wondering “When is Amazon Prime Day going to be in 2025?,” the answer is “You’ll have to wait and see.” Amazon typically reveals the Prime Day dates only a few weeks beforehand to build anticipation.

Do you Need to Be a Prime Member to Shop on Amazon Prime Day?

Anyone can shop at Amazon.com on Prime Days, but only Amazon Prime members will see special deals and be able to take advantage of them.

Amazon Prime is a subscription service that Amazon offers to retain customers and encourage repeat purchases. Subscribers get free shipping for millions of items sold on Amazon’s website, as well as access to a wide range of Amazon content delivery services, special sales events like Prime Day, and exclusive deals every day.

Here are some of the benefits that Amazon offers Prime members:

  • A free delivery option for over 300 million items.
  • Access to a selection of Amazon’s content delivery systems, including Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Reading, Amazon Music, and Free Games With Prime (FGWP).
  • Unlimited photo storage with Amazon Photos.
  • Discounts on other Amazon subscriptions include special pricing for Amazon Music Unlimited, Kindle Unlimited, and Amazon Kids+.
  • Free same-day delivery in some locations for items over $25.00.
  • A free Twitch channel subscription.
  • 30-minute early access to Lightning Deals every day.
  • Exclusive discounts when shopping at Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market.
  • Free shipping and access to unlimited $5.00 eligible generic prescription medications from Amazon Pharmacy.
  • Free delivery for eligible Grubhub orders over $12 and 5% credit back on pick-up orders.
  • Exclusive access to deals and shopping events like Prime Day and Prime Big Deal Days.

How Much is an Amazon Prime Membership?

A Prime membership is $14.99 per month, or $139 per year if paid annually. Customers are allowed to try out Prime membership with a free 30-day trial and cancel their subscription at any time.

Amazon also offers discounted membership options called Prime Access and Prime Student for qualified customers. College students and young adults (ages 18-24) can try Prime Student with a six-month trial and then pay $7.49 per month or $69 per year. Qualifying government assistance recipients can try Prime Access for 30 days and then pay $6.99 per month.

What Should I Buy During Amazon Prime Day?

Prime Day discounts on specific products vary from year to year and from country to country. In 2024, TVs and tablets, headphones and Bluetooth speakers, small kitchen appliances, and back-to-school supplies were top sellers.

If you are trying to decide what to buy, remember that Prime-exclusive event prices are typically among the lowest prices of the year. Also, Amazon offers some of the deepest discounts for their own products, including Kindle e-readers, Fire Tablets, Fire TV Sticks, and Amazon Echo devices.

5 Tips to Prepare for Prime Day 2025

Here are five tips to help you prepare for Amazon’s next sales event:

  1. Sign in to the Amazon website and check to make sure your Amazon Prime subscription is active.
  2. Make a list of what products you want to try and buy on sale before the sales event begins. If you add products to your Wish List or Save for Later section, Alexa can alert you when a product you’ve saved goes on sale.
  3. Pay attention to the most expensive items on your list. Remember that even a 10% or 15% discount for big-ticket items can be significant.
  4. If an item you want to buy isn’t on sale, consider researching competitor sites. Each year, more competitors are offering their own version of Prime Day sales around the same time. (Think: Christmas in July sales)
  5. Be sure to watch for “Lightning Deals” and “Deal of the Day” offers. Sale items are time-sensitive and often have limited stock, but they often have the deepest discounts.

Prime Day Promotions

Prime Day is in the middle of summer, and promotions are often aimed at items a shopper might want to buy for themselves. According to research firm Numerator, the average order size on Prime Day 2024 was $57.97. According to Amazon, many Prime members use the sale to stock up on household basics and pantry staples.

To bring new members in and improve customer retention, Amazon introduced an invite-only deal program for Amazon Prime Days in 2023. They also instituted a second Prime Day-level sales event for the fall called Prime Big Deal Days. This year’s Big Deal Days, which occurred on October 8 and 9, 2024, featured a large selection of giftable products.

Discover Prime Big Deal Days Worldwide

One of Amazon’s biggest challenges is attracting new Prime subscribers each year and encouraging them to stay subscribed throughout the year.

To attract new members, Amazon tested a five-day sale called the Big Spring Sale in March 2024. The company also brought back Prime Big Deal Days to 19 countries in October.

It’s likely that Amazon will continue to experiment with new approaches and expand these events in the future to new countries to maintain its Prime subscriber base and drive growth.

Benefits of Amazon Prime Day

In the last ten years, Amazon Prime Day has become a global phenomenon that has generated billions of dollars in revenue and boosted e-commerce sales for both Amazon and its competitors.

This two-day sales event not only reinforces the value of Prime membership, it also provides Amazon with an opportunity to do a test run for Black Friday, and Cyber Monday and iron out bugs that might affect the rest of the holiday shopping season.

The Bottom Line

Prime Day, by definition, offers the best deals and discounts to Amazon members who have purchased Amazon Prime subscriptions. Summer can be a slow period for retailers, but the attractive deals and sense of urgency that Amazon created with Amazon Prime Day, consistently generates more sales each year.

FAQs

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.