Amazon said Thursday its 2023 Prime Day event was bigger than ever before.
Over the two-day period, July 11–12, Prime members around the world purchased more than 375 million items and collectively saved over $2.5 billion, the e-commerce giant announced.
In fact, the first day of its 48-hour shopping bonanza was the "single largest sales day in company history," Amazon said.
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This year's event was also the biggest Prime Day in history for independent sellers, most of which are small- and medium-sized businesses. Their sales growth in Amazon's store during the event outpaced Amazon's retail business, the company said.
This year, Amazon said it offered more deals on small business products than ever before. This helped certain small businesses significantly boost their average daily sales, by more than 18 times, in Amazon’s store on the first day of the sale alone compared to the days leading up to Prime Day this year.
The buzz around Prime Day also helped boost overall online sales. During the two-day event, consumers collectively spent $12.7 billion across all online marketplaces, which marked a 6.1% growth year over year and set "a new record" for the demand driven by Prime Day, according to the latest data from Adobe Analytics.
Adobe's analysis covers over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites and 18 product categories.
A growing number of retailers have started issuing sales around Prime Day in order to capitalize on the popularity of Amazon's highly anticipated shopping sale.
For instance, Walmart and Target issued competing sales. Both companies tried to entice shoppers to join their own loyalty programs, Walmart+ and Target's Circle, in exchange for discounts on a variety of products.
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"Prime Day has become of one the biggest e-commerce moments of the year, as consumers latch onto major discounts from a number of different retailers," Adobe Digital Insights lead analyst Vivek Pandya said.
Pandya also noted that consumers have also been taking advantage of buy now, pay later services for their shopping even with the slew of discounts offered.
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The service, which allows consumers to pay in installments over time, accounted for 6.5% of orders and drove $927 million in revenue, according to Adobe. That's up 20% year over year and continues to be driven by purchases in categories including apparel, furniture/home and electronics
"The revenue growth attributed to Buy Now Pay Later is a preview of what we can expect in the months ahead, especially as we near the holiday shopping season," Pandya said.
