Amazon takes different approach in announcing Prime Day success

Amazon takes different approach in announcing Prime Day success
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E-commerce giant Amazon had its biggest Prime Day ever but chose to focus on how small businesses benefited from the annual event.

Amazon holds Prime Day yearly and in the past years, it highlighted how the savings event broke previous Black Friday or company sales records. However, this year, Amazon chose to focus on how Prime Day benefitted small and medium-sized businesses.

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The change in approach may be attributed to lawmakers criticizing the retailer for its power over independent merchants selling products through its website and other tactics that critics claim to be hampering competition.

Amazon’s Prime Day press release

While the firm confirmed that this year’s Prime Day was the best on record since the annual event started in 2015, it decided not to include it in the official announcement. According to analysts, Amazon would make as much as $10 billion in sales from this event but the company declined to offer sales figures.

This was a deviation from the company’s previous way of announcing Prime Day results. In the past, Amazon’s messaging strategy was focused on breaking sales records.

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After the debut event in 2015, the company announced “Amazon’s First Ever Prime Day Breaks Global Records, Sales Exceed Black Friday”. In 2017, Amazon touted that “Prime Members Enjoyed Biggest Global Shopping Event in Amazon History this Prime Day.”

Last year, the company’s press release read: “Alexa, How Was Prime Day? Prime Day 2019 Surpassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday Combined.”

Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at market research firm eMarketer who has studied Amazon for more than 10 years, pointed out that the change in messaging strategy may mean that the retail giant was trying to position itself as an ally of small businesses as antitrust issues emerged.

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Lipsman said: “Every one of the big tech platforms is trying to position itself as friends of the little guy during the pandemic.”

Recent news on Amazon

In August, Amazon announced that it appointed Alicia Boler Davis to become first black woman to join the company’s senior leadership team.

Alicia Boler Davis, who was hired by Amazon in 2019, was appointed as the company’s vice president of global customer fulfillment, effectively becoming the fourth female and first black woman to join the firm’s esteemed senior leadership group or “S-team.”

Davis previously worked as an executive at General Motors (GM) and held several roles during her 24-year career at the automobile giant. She was head of global manufacturing and labor relations at GM.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon UK said in September that it was hiring 10,000 new permanent employees this year, most of which will be based in Amazon warehouses. The hiring program of Amazon UK brought the company’s total headcount in the country to over 40,000.

The Amazon jobs that will be filled include health and safety specialists, engineers, as well as workers who pick, pack, and ship items to Amazon’s customers.

In a statement, Stefano Perego, Amazon’s vice president of European customer fulfillment, said that “The new roles will help us continue to meet customer demand and support small and medium sized businesses selling on Amazon.”

On the other hand, the company earlier this month admitted that 19,816 of its frontline US employees at Amazon and Whole Foods have contracted the coronavirus.

This was the first time that Amazon made an official statement regarding how the coronavirus pandemic has affected its employees. The company has been previously refusing to share comprehensive data on the total number of COVID-19 positive workers at its warehouses.