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What you need to know about Amazon’s Digital Day

What you need to know about Amazon's Digital Day

Amazon is adept at creating sales events, and the buzz that goes with them. Amazon’s Digital Day, the second annual such event in December is modeled after Amazon Prime Day with a focus on digital content such as movies and ebooks.

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Prime Day — Amazon’s entirely made up holiday that ran 30 hours of deals for members of its Prime program — was the biggest sales day ever in Amazon history, surpassing both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to the company. The event is intended to increase both the number of members and the amount of money and time they spend with the online retailer.

Amazon does not break out sales or report the number of members it has in the Prime program, but following Prime Day this year it noted that “tens of millions of Prime members made a purchase on Prime Day 2017, more than 50% higher than the prior year.” Various analysts and reporting agencies peg the number of Prime members at more than 80 million and recent report from the Consumer Research Intelligence Council puts it close to 90 million.

“Amazon is defying the traditional laws of retail physics which dictate that growth slows after a retailer reaches 25% market share. This demonstrates how different Amazon is from any other retail entity,” Matt Sargent, senior vice president of retail at Frank N. Magid Associates, told Retail Dive. “The ability of Prime to build aggressively upon its base (42% of US consumers) demonstrates that Amazon is succeeding in its strategy to build an ecosystem that is undeniably attractive to all customers.”

But there’s some indication that membership may have peaked, at least according to a recent report from Morgan Stanley which found that membership in the U.S. flattened in 2016. And now there’s a new event launching to help turn that around.

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Digital Day will launch thousands of online only deals on 29 December, with some starting as early as 26 December, which should inspire shoppers to check back in frequently, much as they do for Prime Day. Amazon is promising up to to 80% off on apps, games, movies, eBooks and more — with 40% more deals than Digital Day last year.

(Source: Forbes)