This year Amazon launched its exclusive “invite-only” feature to allow Prime members to specifically ”request an invite to purchase products offered with these deals”.
The new feature was added to the Amazon website with Prime Day suggestions aleady live like signing up for their newsletter, creating deal alerts for personalized recommendations, getting deal notifications, or setting a reminder from Alexa.
The “invite-only” offer could be designed to give customers a better opportunity at actually getting the sale item they want which could be challenging depending on the deal.
According to Bloomberg, when shoppers request an “invite” for sale Prime Day items, they get an email if the deal is still available and if it is, a unique link to buy the product during the sale is provided.
Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti said in a statement: “Amazon continues to invest in Prime by expanding existing benefits and adding new benefits to add even more value.”
With “invite-only”, Amazon is giving shoppers slightly more control in a lottery-style format to monitor the items they wish to buy, said Kristin McGrath, editor of RetailMeNot.
“This way you either get the deal or you don’t and you don’t waste two days searching for it,” she said.
Further, she said ideally now Amazon shoppers won’t have to refresh browsers or monitor their sale items by continuously checking Amazon.com.
The current consumer market is not without its challenges with inflation and interest rates rising but Amazon might be banking on this new feature, along with the deals themselves. to increase consumer interest and participation for Prime Day.
Based on Amazon share pricing, this year the online retailer stocks have already soared to about 53%, and this Tuesday shares rallied up around 1%.
According to Insider Intelligence, Amazon Prime Day 2023 is forecasted to rake in about $12.9 billion, spiking up to around 11% from last year.
Numbers reported have already suggested the two-day event is off to a strong start with a higher than usual average purchase price was up to A$87.85 or USD$59 in the United States (U.S.), shared Numerator. Additionally, top-selling items include Apple watches and reminiscent of the pandemic, Amazon brand toilet paper, of all things.
For Amazon members, they are increasingly seeing Prime Day as an important benefit of a Prime subscription, suggests Prosper Insights and Analytics, which conducts monthly consumer surveys.
In fact, a May survey recorded around 42% of purchasers who said Prime Day deals were a top reason they signed up, which is 26% higher than in 2019.
Not only for consumers, Amazon also helps some third-party sellers to unload extra inventory and because the retailing giant gives brands maximum company exposure, Prime Day accelerates Amazon’s advertising business, according to Alasdair McLean-Foreman, founder and chief executive officer of Teikametrics.
“Brands are putting their money where they feel the most confident, and Amazon has so much information about ad performance…Prime Day is going to be successful even though there’s this advertising recession,” he said.
