Prime Day Recap; Recent eCommerce Conferences; Target Promotional Activity
By Cleveland Admin
Amazon released a Prime Day statement on in the form of an eCommerce research report. The statement detailed the sales of small business products from the two-week “Spend $10, Get $10” promotion leading up to Prime Day, which was up 100%+ vs. the last Prime Day. Additionally, customers purchased more than 250 million items worldwide, a significant increase from the 175 million items sold in 2019 (~43% increase over the 2 years).
We are still collecting data points on brands’ Prime Day performance for our ecommerce research reports, but it appears brands within the consumer electronics, home security, nutrition, and appliance categories saw the strongest results, while other categories felt that traffic did not live up to expectations. More to come as Amazon releases additional data from the event over the next few weeks.
Recent Consumer & Retail Summits/Conferences:
Several retailers have presented at industry conferences over the last few weeks discussing their eCommerce research trends and future plans. We’ve pulled some of the most interesting quotes below, along with the presentation replay links:
- Lowe’s on online fulfillment: “We’re striving for a model where we have fulfillment facilities around the country that will allow us to be [in] virtually every zip code in the US, and [right now] we [do] have same-day capabilities in some areas… today roughly 60% of all of our online fulfillment comes out of our stores. So, that’s the model that we like and want to ramp up.” (Baird Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference)
- Walmart on Walmart Connect: “We think we can be a multi-billion dollar business over the next few years.” (Baird Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference)
- Shopify on upcoming investments: “I would say [our] most aggressive incremental investment are the two major pain points for merchants… discovery [and]… the Shopify Fulfillment Network.” (Evercore TMT Conference)
- Macy’s on digital retention: “Nearly half of our new customers in the first quarter came through the digital channel. 47% of them made their first transaction through digital, which was a 74% increase compared to the 1Q19. What’s even more encouraging, …is that 82% of our digital orders came from repeat customers, which is the highest penetration of repeat orders that we’ve seen in a single quarter.” (Evercore ISI Consumer & Retail Summit)
- Kohl’s on eCommerce fulfillment: “Right now, pickup is about 50% of our digital demand.” (Evercore ISI Consumer & Retail Summit)
Recent Insights on Target’s eCommerce Business:
Target (along with Walmart and many others) ran big promotional events this week in competition with Prime Day. However, aside from this week’s major shopping holiday, Target has stated that they are committing to less promotional activity in 2021 compared to 2019. Our eCommerce research reports suggest that this decline in promotional activity coupled with a softness in online traffic has driven Target’s eCommerce penetration to dip lower than the low- to mid-20% level they saw during the peak of the pandemic. Overall, Target seems to be tasked with the balance of working to keep the eCommerce share gains they saw during COVID while also focusing attention to the newly emerged in-store consumer.
