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With Prime Day Delayed, Amazon Unveils ‘Big Summer Sale’

Amazon has postponed its annual Prime Day until an undisclosed date in September or October due to the pandemic, but that didn’t stop the e-Commerce giant from surreptitiously shaking up retail’s summer doldrums with deep discounting.

The new promotion, “The Big Summer Sale Event,” is actually “a range of different deals launching over the next few weeks,” said Nell Rona, Public Relations Manager for Amazon in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. She said the sales, which launched at the beginning of August, run through Labor Day.

Like Prime Day, Black-Friday-level deep discounts are a key feature of Amazon’s Summer Sale. In contrast to Prime Day, though, Amazon’s Summer Sale is available to all shoppers, not just Prime members.

Amazon relied on the last-minute tactic it has used with Prime Day to try to keep competitors in the dark, so consumer media were not alerted until the sale was under way, and some miscommunication ensued.

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“Amazon’s Big Summer Sale kicked off secretly and without any promotion on August 6th,” ET wrote on August 7, although The Huffington Post had already clued in its readers on August 3.

A USA Today headline on August 4 declared, “Surprise! Amazon’s Big Summer Sale is here and the discounts are amazing,” and People magazine wrote, “Amazon Just Launched a Secret Summer Sale — and Deals Start at $5.”

For five years beginning in 2015, Amazon turned its July Prime Day, which stretched from a one-day to a two-day event last year, into the Black Friday of the summer, prompting an increasing number of retailers to counter-program with their own special discounting events.

In a CNET interview last year, Jon Reily, currently Global Chief Strategy Officer – Dentsu Commerce, said Prime Day “serves as another example of Amazon putting its rivals on the defensive and forcing them to spend more money to compete.”

The summer discounts are likely to keep Amazon’s momentum, fueled by stay-at-home orders, building: Amazon sales soared 40% in Q2.

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