Prime Day Was Dominated By Amazon-Branded Electronics

Amazon aggressively discounted its own branded electronics for Prime Day this year, and the strategy seems to have worked as consumers scooped up Amazon Fire and Amazon Echo products.

The list of top individual products purchased was dominated by Amazon’s electronics. According to InfoScout, the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote was the top-selling product, followed by the Amazon Echo Dot (second generation). In fact, Amazon-branded electronics accounted for seven of the top 10 products purchased on Prime Day. The Instant Pot (third overall) and 23andMe DNA test (seventh overall), were the top-ranked non-Amazon products.

“While many expected that consumer electronics would lead the way on Prime Day, the extent to which the category dominated was surprising, nearly doubling its share from last year and driving more than one out of every three dollars spent during the event,” said eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman. “The particulars were also very revealing, with seven of the top 10 sellers being Amazon-branded electronics – all of which were Alexa-enabled. With the influx of voice-enabled Echoes, Fire TVs and Fire tablets, we may eventually look back at Prime Day 2018 as an inflection point in the household adoption of voice technology.”

eMarketer’s latest report, Amazon Prime Day 2018 Unboxed, sums up how the day went for the ecommerce giant, and what effects it had on the wider retail market.

The deepest discounts were offered on Amazon’s visually enabled Echo products—the Echo Show (from $229 to $129) and Echo Look (from $199 to $99).

Nicolás Ávila, vice president of Technology at Globant, said of this year’s focus on these particular Echo devices: “Amazon understands this is key to position themselves not only in the center of every connected consumer’s home, but to also reduce pain points that simplify purchases for consumers. As more and more consumers have voice devices in their home, we’ll likely see a growth in consumer purchasing using voice devices, and potentially incentives [and] deals for customers who do order through these devices regularly, not just on shopping holidays.”

Other voice-activated Amazon devices were also featured among the day’s top sellers. The top product sold globally was Amazon’s Fire TV Stick with voice-activated remote, which represents perhaps an important signal of the emergence of voice within the TV sphere. Amazon’s voice-activated Fire TV Cube—a device that not only streams over-the-top content but also hooks into cable—is another such device that has the potential to change the way consumers navigate TV.

In the latest episode of "Behind the Numbers," eMarketer analyst Andrew Lipsman evaluates the performance of this emergent shopping holiday now that the dust has settled.

For a complete reckoning of this year’s Prime Day, including an analysis of Prime membership, product category sales and mobile usage, read eMarketer’s follow-up report, Amazon Prime Day 2018 Unboxed.

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