This year marked Amazon’s ninth annual Prime Day — a two-day sales event exclusively for Prime members. In the weeks leading up to the event, Amazon revealed that this Prime Day would offer “more deals than any Prime Day event before,” including its first-ever invite-only deals, where members could request access to the most exclusive deals such as 75% off one of its most popular Fire TVs. While final numbers have not been released, Amazon revealed that July 11, the first day of the event, was the largest sales day in company history, with more than 375 million items sold at savings of more than $2.5 billion.

As in years past, Prime Day also prompted other retailers such as Best Buy, Target, and Walmart to hop on the summer sale bandwagon. To track how other retailers competed with Amazon this Prime Day, we reviewed 115 brand and retailer websites, spanning numerous categories. Here are the key findings:

  • Nearly two-thirds of these 115 retailers and brands participated. Of these retailers and brands, 63% ran some form of promotion, but just 9% held a sitewide sale. Instead, many offered sales on select products or ran additional promotions on their already-discounted sales sections. Additionally, only 6% offered free shipping with no minimum order as part of a promotion. (Note: This number excludes those retailers that offer free shipping year-round.)
  • Retailers and brands in Amazon’s most popular categories were active. Home & kitchen and beauty & personal care are among the most popular categories on Amazon, per Jungle Scout. Retailers and brands in these categories were particularly active: 10 of the 16 retailers and brands in “beauty, health, & wellness” had sales, as did 17 of the 22 we grouped in “home and household goods.” Additionally, 13 of the 16 consumer electronics brands reviewed participated in the Prime Day festivities, including Dell and HP with “Black Friday in July” promotions.
  • Sales extended beyond the two-day period. Much like Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become weeklong sales events, so are competing retailers’ Prime Day sales. Instead of its usual “Deal Days” event, Target held “Circle Week” for its loyalty members from July 9–15. After opting out of Prime Day in 2022, Walmart came back with Walmart Plus Week from July 10–13. IKEA also offered a gift card promotion from July 10–16.

If you’re interested in looking at the results of past-year Prime Day analyses, you can review our findings from 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Now that one of the summer’s biggest sales events has concluded, stay tuned for end-of-year holiday season prep advice for retailers and brands. Connect with us and other Forrester analysts to learn more about holiday strategies and tactics as we head into the latter half of 2023.