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Prime Day 2021 Expands Small Business Focus and Sets the Stage for Back-to-School

Prime Day 2021 will officially span June 21 and 22, featuring more than 2 million deals across categories including fashion, electronics, toys, home décor and automotive. Amazon already is launching early deals and promotions, including a $10 Prime Day credit for members who spend $10 on select U.S. small business products and brands from June 7 through 10.

A total of 300,000 small businesses are eligible for the Spend $10, Get $10 Promotion, more than twice as many as in 2020. This year’s small business partnership will include a curated storefront at amazon.com/supportsmall, which includes collections of products from Black-owned, woman-owned and military family-owned retailers.

The extended festivities will kick off with Kristen Bell, Karamo Brown and Mindy Kaling hosting a live shopping event on June 7, during which they will be joined by small business owners to discuss their products and stories. Amazon will continue highlighting curated deals from small businesses throughout the event.

“At the heart of Prime Day is our incredible selling partner community of almost 2 million small and medium-sized businesses around the world,” said Amazon in a statement. “They enable Amazon to deliver a great experience for customers on Prime Day and throughout the year. These third-party sellers represent almost 60% of sales on Amazon, and they are a continual source of inspiration for us. That’s why, in 2020, we invested over $18 billion in our logistics network, tools, services, programs and teams to help sellers thrive in Amazon’s store.”

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Prime Day 2021 Will be Driven by Loyalty and Discounts

Shoppers may be poised to unleash pent-up demand in Amazon’s direction: 74% of U.S. consumers increased or maintained their spending on Amazon in Q2 2021, according to a survey by JungleScout. This level of loyalty is due to Amazon’s broad, often long-tail selection: 62% of consumers said they were able to find items on Amazon that they couldn’t find elsewhere during the pandemic. As a result, 74% say they search for products on Amazon, compared to 49% who start with search engines like Google and Bing.

In total, 42% of shoppers say they plan to shop on Prime Day 2021 and another 32% say they might participate. Deep discounts will be a larger draw than ever, with 75% of shoppers looking for ways to save money with coupons, deals, and promotions, and 68% on the hunt for product with the lowest price when shopping online. This may be due to 40% of consumers saving more than they were prior to COVID-19.

Prime Day Once Again Sets the Pace for Back-to-School

The average shopper plans to spend $594 during Prime Day 2021, according to a survey by RetailMeNot. The top categories are clothing, shoes and apparel (which 44% of consumers plan to shop for), kitchen appliances (32%) and smart home products and home décor (30% each).

The event has previously acted as the gateway to the back-to-school season, and that will be unchanged despite its earlier date (Prime Day 2019 was held on July 19): 92% of shoppers are likely to use Amazon Prime Day to shop for back-to-school items this year. Prime Day creates a strong ripple effect on the entire industry: 66% of retailers told RetailMeNot that the 2020 Prime Day shift affected their back-to-school performance.

Retailers have been taking advantage of Prime Day’s ability to put people into a shopping mood. RetailMeNot observed more than 350 retailers promoting alongside Prime Day in 2020, a 17% increase over 2019. This number may climb even higher in 2021; optimistic retailers expect total Prime Day sales to rise and they plan on driving increased engagement to overcome last year’s challenges.

Prime Day will kick off on June 21 at midnight PDT. The event will be open to Prime members in the U.S., the UK, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Spain, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Netherlands, Mexico, Luxembourg, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, China, Brazil, Belgium, Austria and Australia.

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