Prime Day is Amazon’s yearly answer to “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday.” Since 2015, Prime Day has been a highly-publicized assortment of sales and promotions. These promotions are targeted solely towards Amazon Prime subscribers. But while Amazon Prime Day certainly seems successful every year, it’s also led to widespread criticism.
Amazon Prime Day Now Tied to Strikes
Since 2018, Amazon workers have been organizing strikes on Prime Day. Prime Day is one of the busiest sales for Amazon, and consequently the date is chosen for impact. Further, during busier times, Amazon workers (such as drivers and warehouse workers) need to work exceptionally long hours — part of what they’re striking against.
Many have called for boycotting Amazon during Prime Day in order to enact change. Amazon has come under fire for long, unsafe warehouse conditions, though Amazon has defended itself in the past by pointing out that its fulfillment centers operate similarly to many other centers.
However, these boycotts often have minimal impact on Amazon, because few realize how ubiquitous Amazon has become. Amazon Web Services now run a great portion of the internet, and invisibly so; it’s difficult for someone to determine whether a website is run on AWS.
In addition to Amazon Prime services, Amazon also runs Twitch, Amazon Music, Amazon Now, and many others — it’s an extensive network of products and services that are difficult to boycott in entirety.
UPS Says Amazon Fast Shipping is Bad for the Environment
Amazon specializes in last mile deliveries. To get deliveries to customers faster, it often uses employees, gig workers, and a combination of postal services and shipping services. Packages are delivered to a city, and then they are distributed from that city. Sometimes the delivery vans may only take a single delivery at a time. Amazon Prime Day is now a major shipping holiday.
When deliveries are done less frequently, each individual driver will have additional stops. When deliveries are done more frequently, it increases the chances that they may be only a single package being delivered per neighborhood. Increasingly, Amazon’s shipping is becoming a problem, in terms of both the environment and cost.
As Amazon grows, this shipping problem is becoming more significant. Fast shipping is leading to more cars on the road, more cars going back and forth, and ultimately more fossil fuels being burned.
A Lack of Good Sales Keeps Customers Skeptical
Since inception, Prime Day has been lambasted for having poor sales. Customers report that the sales are difficult to navigate, with random items having arbitrary discounts, and discounts often lasting only a few hours. The sales themselves also tend to be lackluster, often just 10% to 20% off, and often discounting items that have already been marked up.
Despite this, Amazon’s Prime Day has been successful in the past, with the 2015 Prime Day performing more successfully than 2014’s Black Friday. Amazon’s Prime Day is also no longer a single day, but instead two days total.
Target, Walmart, and Others Create Competition
On Prime Day, many other online retailers decided to run their own sales. Most notably, Target had a major sale on all of its goods, as a method of competing. Target now owns Shipt, a single day delivery service, and so was able to offer some sale items for same-day delivery. This is something that Amazon presently only offers in some areas.
With increasing competition, Prime Day is becoming a type of secondary Cyber Monday, with many online retailers and big box stores running large sales to capture the same audience.
“Canceling Amazon Prime”
Analysts noted that searches for “canceling Amazon Prime” spiked sharply during Amazon Prime Day, at 18 times the previous amounts. Customers want to get Amazon Prime deals, but don’t want to pay for Amazon Prime. That could indicate that Amazon Prime Day isn’t a good way to get new Amazon customers, even if it may move some products.
Many of the deals on Amazon Prime were for Amazon-related products, ranging from home security systems to Kindles. This is likely designed to improve brand engagement overall, but these Google searches indicate that many are not be interested in a long-term relationship with the company.
Altogether, Amazon is doing astonishingly well in multiple markets, but there are ongoing concerns that the company is contributing to harmful levels of environmental damage. Companies such as Target are aggressively attempting to capture Amazon’s market, and Amazon’s reputation as a deal purveyor is waning. However, despite the Amazon Marketplace being the most visible portion of Amazon, it’s not the only portion. The well-developed diversity of the company, which includes cloud services and streaming content, is likely to carry it through any consumer concerns.
Regards,
Ethan Warrick
Editor
Wealth Authority
