Over 50% of U.S. Households Expected to Have Prime Membership by Year's End

Amazon Prime is a popular service that allows subscribers to pay a yearly fee in order to get expedited shipping on everything they order. Two years ago, on July 15, 2015, which was the anniversary of the company's founding, CEO Jeff Bezos started something new to further incentivize Prime users: Amazon Prime Day. On Prime Day, subscribers get special deals on select Amazon products. According to the L.A. Times article written by Angel Gonzalez and Ethan Varian, this year's Prime Day (on July 10th), attracted over 60% more shoppers than last year.

Prime Day, which has been compared to Cyber Monday or Black Friday, was designed by Amazon founder and CEO Bezos to be a "holiday" of deals. Not only was it intended to reward current Prime members, but it was also meant to attract new users. Although Amazon has only released the numbers of users that made purchases on Prime Day, it's likely that they gained many more Prime users in the weeks or months leading up to Prime Day. Tens of millions of users made purchases on Prime Day, over 50% more than last year, which brought in over $1 billion in revenue for Amazon over a single 30-hour period.

Analysts have calculated that the number of households in the US with a Prime account has increased 7% over the past year, and they predict that over half of the households in America will have Prime membership by the end of the year. Free shipping and various deals led people to buy some of their favorite new gadgets this year. Over the 30 hour period in 13 countries, Amazon's biggest sellers were their Amazon Echo speaker, Amazon Fire tablets, and Instant Pot programmable pressure cooker. Many other items sold well, but users were really after the deals on personal electronics.

Other retailers tried similar promotions to either compete with or ride the hype of Prime Day. Fry's Electronics offered free same-day delivery on select items and Best Buy had a "Big Deals Day." In the years to come, it is likely that many other businesses will follow suit, offering free shipping at the very least. Some day in the near future, Prime Day may become a holiday in its own right, similar in scope to Cyber Monday or Black Friday. As long as the deals keep coming, customers will keep shopping, so we'll just have to wait and see.

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Mobile Shopping Increasingly Becoming an Integral Component of Black Friday

Black Friday has become a cultural phenomenon throughout the US. When it first started in 1952, it was just a day to start your holiday shopping, when stores discounted their products so that they could begin making a profit for the year and be "in the black." As time went on, the deals got better and better until it got to a point that people were waiting for hours in the middle of the night on Thanksgiving to get a chance at the best discounts once the stores opened. Over the past few years, however, stores have started to offer the same deals online as in the stores, which has reduced the number of Black Friday shoppers. Samantha Masunaga, in her L.A. Times article, discusses the shift to mobile shopping and some of the reasons why Black Friday continues, even with such decreased demand.

This year, it is projected that the e-commerce for the holiday season will grow to a valuation of over $117 billion. While Cyber Monday once represented the day when deal-hunters could get discounts on their online shopping, but now that so much of the Black Friday Shopping can be done online, many people consider Cyber Monday to be obsolete. It makes more sense to get their deals over the holiday than to find an hour or two in the middle of a busy workday to find the best deals. Retailers are seeing the difference: on Thanksgiving night, which has in itself begun to replace Black Friday, sales were 13.6% higher than last year, a total of nearly $1.2 billion.

Not only are people taking advantage of online deals rather than going into the stores, a surprising number of shoppers are doing so via mobile devices instead of computers. Nearly $550 million of the $1.2 billion total on Thanksgiving night came from mobile purchases. That's a 58.6% increase from last year's mobile sales. While mobile shopping is convenient, some people find it to be too much of a hassle and prefer using a computer, at least to complete their transactions. Not enough online retailers have improved their mobile layout, which has led to a projection that while 53% of e-commerce visits will happen on mobile devices, only 34% of sales will happen on apps.

Many customers find the checkout process to be too time-consuming or confusing on mobile apps for some businesses, and opt to go onto a computer or choose an easy-to-understand platform like Amazon to make their purchases. If online retailers want to stay competitive, they will have to improve their platforms, potentially by integrating easier payment systems like PayPal, Android Pay, or Apple Pay, rather than making customers try to input credit card information on the small screen of their smartphone. Target and Wal-Mart, among other companies, have noticed improvements in their mobile performance over the past few years. After fixing its online platforms and making it easier to checkout, Target even found that mobile sales over the weekend had increased by 200% from last year.

While mobile apps and online platforms are great for the tech-savvy consumer, many customers prefer the emotional connection to Black Friday that they get by physically going to the late-night sales. Some shoppers don't want to do online shopping because they would prefer to see the product up close and examine it before buying. Other people just enjoy the cultural experience of rushing through the store, hunting for deals. Whatever the reason, even if Black Friday becomes a mainly online phenomenon, it is very likely that there will still be in-store experiences available. Black Friday is a tradition for many shoppers, and especially since many people do their bargain-hunting online, crowding is less of an issue, many shoppers expect to be able to keep up the practice for many years to come.

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Study by Adobe Systems: Holiday Deals and Discounts of 2016

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, many people are already starting to plan for the holiday shopping that comes right around the corner. Late November is often the best time to shop for the holidays if you're looking for great deals on many items. However, this rule often only applies to general items, not specialty items that might sell out quickly. Jonnelle Marte, in her L.A. Times article, describes the results of a study performed by Adobe systems, which tells shoppers which dates are potentially the best for deals on toys, electronics, clothing, and jewelry.

Just a few years ago, Black Friday started early on the morning following Thanksgiving, when many people were off of work and had the time to go wait in hours-long lines to get a deal on the latest products. More recently, though, Black Friday has undergone a shift to start earlier and earlier, to the extent that some stores start their "Black Friday" sales as early as 6 PM on Thanksgiving Day itself. Some items have their best deals on Black Friday, but not as many as might be expected.

Electronics are one category of items that receive the largest markdowns on Thanksgiving Day, according to Adobe's research. From flat-screen televisions to cell phones and computers, Thanksgiving is the day to get those deals. When compared to the average prices on the electronics in October, it was found that televisions are expected to be discounted by an average of 20% and tablet computers will have an average discount of 18%. Those deals won't last forever, of course, given that the stores only have a limited supply of each product, but for the deal-hunters that get to their holiday shopping extra early, they could find themselves snagging quite the discount.

Another type of item that has its greatest discount on Thanksgiving is jewelry. Adobe's study found that on average, jewelry will be discounted approximately 10%. The research also found that many people push off making those purchases until later on, closer to the holidays, often because they are searching for the "perfect" piece of jewelry, regardless of the jewelry's brand. Because they search for a certain style and higher quality of jewelry, they often miss out on the deals, but because they get the best piece they can, many customers don't mind missing out on the 10% savings.

Most other items have their greatest deals on days other than Thanksgiving/ Black Friday. For example, clothing and other apparel often have the greatest discounts on November 22nd, or the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Retailers often start their discounts on clothing early, because it's not an item in major demand. Most people are more appreciative if they get a new electronic device on the holidays, not clothing, so the stores have to do something extra to get the additional revenue that has become expected during holiday times. In fact, some everyday items, like socks, will sometimes be marked down the most significantly right after the holidays are over.

As for toys, Adobe's research showed that the best day for deals would be Cyber Monday, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday is known for its online deals, but it is expected that most toys, especially generic ones, will be discounted an average of 13%. Toys are a more tricky item, especially for parents, because if they wait for the best deal on certain in-demand items, they may end up missing out on the item altogether, if te store's stock runs out. So, in general, Cyber Monday can offer the best deals on toys, as long as you're not focused on getting a particular toy. If you are looking for the latest Hatchimal or Lego set, you might want to pay a little bit extra to guarantee you get it.

Overall, the best deals seem to be those involving electronics that are offered on Thanksgiving Day. Every other deal seems to be a good one, but only to the customer who doesn't care about what specific product they are getting. For electronics, especially televisions, many customers don't care about the specific brand, so any discount on a large, flat-screen television is a good thing. When it comes to pieces of jewelry, people become pickier and look for quality pieces that won't necessarily offer the better deal. The above suggestions will benefit people searching for general products, but if a customer is looking for a very specific product, they might just have to bite the bullet and spend full price on it to help guarantee that they get exactly what they want.

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