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What Did Amazon Do This Week? - 16-07-2023 [+40 LINKS]

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Jul 16, 2023

AMAZON PRIME DAY WAS GOOD, NOT GREAT

Created in 2015, Amazon’s Prime Day isn’t as old as most people think and while it does generate Amazon billions in revenue every year, it’s not always a home run.

Overall, Prime Day was a success with Amazon making almost $13 billion (up 6.1% YoY). Shoppers spent roughly the same on both days and according to Adobe Analytics, 375 million items were purchased worldwide and there were more deals than ever. The top tech brands purchased came from Apple, Samsung, iRobot or the usual suspects. Smartphones remained a popular category. Records fell but no one is throwing around the word ‘smashed’.

Those who did purchase goods tended to buy cheaper than in previous years with more than 50% of goods being under $20 and just 5% spending $100 or more. Likely by design with Amazon and co reading the global room, but also generally people have less money in their pockets. The average basket was just £2 more than last year at $54.05 which won’t send any stakeholders diving into their Scrooge McDucky pools of money.

Increasingly data from different sources show a different behaviour forming; customers really waiting until Prime Day to buy goods and for others. An opportunity for Amazon to build on the excitement, but also a worry for Amazon as they will strain their systems and people in order to fulfil orders. One way they could help themselves is by helping customers ship all household orders in one box - over two-thirds of Prime customers placed multiple orders.

People bought for their homes (28% of purchases). While consumer electronics remained a strong driver of purchases, people spent more on homes, pets and other non-electronic items (21%) than ever before. Possibly due to economic crises happening, but also a shift in priorities and the post-pandemic TV/electronic goods upgrade lull. According to Numerator the top-selling goods were…cat treats. Here’s how the early data is breaking down:

SO WHAT?

While 2023 saw the biggest Prime Day ever, results did squeak in rather than roar which lends itself to rumours that are circulating that Amazon may cancel its Prime Day sales event after 2023. The share price bumped just 2%. Growth fell below multiple analyst’s expectations of 9.5% YoY and even with high inflation and economic uncertainties spending was robust, but will the growth be enough to justify all the work, stress and squeezing merchants that come with every Prime Day? Also, reliance on influencers and areas that aren’t Amazon’s wheelhouse will cause internal folks to raise eyebrows. Consumer budgets are unlikely to be any better this time next year in the markets that matter most to Amazon. The company might just focus on other areas and grow them instead.

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Prime Video’s Indian Head, Sushant Sreeram, gave a rare interview. /Variety
Audible promoted Rachel Ghiazza to Chief Content Officer. /Variety
Amazon extended the run for ‘Jury Duty’ on Prime Video run following Emmy breakthrough. /Deadline
Amazon claims it’s been ‘unfairly singled out’ by the EU’s digital content rules. /Verge
Amazon showed first-looks at ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’, ‘Reacher’ Return, ‘The Boys’ Spinoff ‘Gen V’. /Deadline
Amazon had its best-ever Emmy nominations count (45). /Variety

AWS launched a new AI team as it scrambles to compete with rivals like OpenAI, leaked email and transcript shows. /BI
AWS announced Glue Crawlers now support Apache Iceberg. /Amazon
Amazon CloudWatch now supports Service Quotas in cross-account observability. /Amazon
Amazon S3 Inventory can include ACLs as object metadata in inventory reports. /Amazon
AWS Batch on AWS Fargate now supports Linux ARM64 and Windows x86 containers in CLI/SDK. /Amazon
AWS Elemental MediaTailor introduces alert categories in Channel Assembly. /Amazon
AWS Proton introduces deployment history. /Amazon
Amazon EMR on EKS adds programmatic execution for managed endpoints. /Amazon
Amazon EC2 M7g and R7g instances are now available in additional regions. /Amazon
Amazon Personalize now makes it easier to add columns to existing datasets. /Amazon
AWS DMS now supports Amazon Redshift Serverless as a target. /Amazon
Amazon Connect launches APIs to programmatically delete Routing Profiles and Queues. /Amazon
Amazon CloudFront announces support for 3072-bit RSA certificates. /Amazon
Amazon announced SageMaker Model Card can now be associated with a specific model version in SageMaker Model Registry. /Amazon
Amazon announced Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP now supports WORM protection for regulatory compliance and ransomware protection. /Amazon
Generative AI could be a win for Amazon because of increased IT budgets. /BI

Amazon offered Prime members up to 25% off Amazon Fresh purchases for Prime Day this year. /BI
Amazon has lost 1 million daily app users in the UK since Jan 1. /ChannelX
Amazon announced Sellers can now send FBA inventory from the US to the UK via air shipments with the Amazon Partnered Carrier programme. /Amazon
Amazon introduced the Payments Reports Repository, a new home for all reports that relate to your payments with Amazon. /Amazon

Amazon told a court the company shouldn't have to police its platforms for hate speech and disinformation. /BI
Amazon suffered from poor-quality Twitter ads. /Verge
Amazon opened applications for the third instalment of the annual Amazon Launchpad Innovation Awards. /ChannelX
Amaozn laid off around 80 people in the Pharmacy division. /CNBC
Some Amazon execs consider ‘Buy with Prime’ a risky bet. /ECB
The consultant who helped Amazon sellers get their accounts reinstated was sentenced on Friday to two years of probation, including a year of home confinement, and a $100,000 fine. /ECB
Amazon received a labour board complaint on failure to bargain with New York union. /Reuters
Amazon has restricted use of ChatGPT for employees. /BI

How Amazon harnessed its influencer network to create buzz and sell products around Prime Day. /BI
Amazon’s AWS HoneyCloud may be about to put on the chopping block. /BI
Temu sellers are now even copying product photos, descriptions, and entire Amazon storefronts, lawsuits allege. /BI

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