Prime Day effect set to cool slightly, Salesforce

Salesforce has released its 2019 Amazon Prime Day predictions, using data from 500 million US shoppers and 1.4 billion visits.

This year, Amazon is extending it from 36 to 48 hours, with the shopping extravaganza taking place on 15th and 16th July. “As Prime Day loses a bit of its newness factor and goes on longer than ever before, we predict slightly less revenue growth compared to previous years,” Salesforce says in a blog post. “We anticipate that this year's Prime Day will see year-over-year e-commerce revenue growth across retail of 51%, compared to last year's 60%.”

This number, it points out, is still significant – for example, Q1 2019 saw just 12% revenue growth compared to Q4 2018. “Other retailers are likely to build on the demand that Amazon will generate during this timeframe. Thus, while year-over-year growth will likely slow slightly, Prime Day will still drum up strong shopper interest in the dog days of summer leading up to back-to-school sales,” the blog post states.

Mobile, meanwhile, will hit a new Prime Day milestone. “In Q1 2019, we saw the mobile tipping point for order share officially arrive: Mobile is now responsible for more e-commerce orders than desktop computers,” Salesforce says. “In 2019, we expect to see the most mobile-first Prime Day ever, with 49% of orders and 66% of visits coming from mobile phones. Contrast that with 44% and 61% last year. This mobile-first march mirrors the 2018 holiday shopping season when mobile shopping eclipsed desktop for the first time.”

Read the full blog post here.