Amazon follows record-setting Prime Day with Holiday Dash Deal events - RetailWire

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Oct 16, 2020

Amazon.com is coming off a record-setting Prime Day performance and following it with Holiday Dash Deals, an ongoing sales promotion that the e-tailing giant says will deliver “Black Friday-worthy” savings to its customers leading up to Christmas.

Shoppers on the site can go to amazon.com/events/Holidaydash to discover current and future deals across a wide variety of product categories, including tech devices by Amazon and other brands, computers, apparel and accessories, food, health and beauty, products for the home, toys and more.

It’s not clear from Amazon’s description of the event if Dash Deals represent a significant increase in promotional activity over past holiday seasons. (RetailWire has reached out to Amazon for clarification on this issue and will report back if an update is given.)

It also remains to be seen whether this week’s two-day Prime Day event will provide a momentum booster for Amazon’s seasonal traffic and sales or if it will in a significant way cut into customer purchases that would normally come in November and December.

Either scenario could prove problematic for Amazon, with the former putting pressure on the company to safely and efficiently meet high demand, something it struggled with earlier in the year as the novel coronavirus pandemic upset life and retailing in America.

Amazon has engaged in ramped-up hiring efforts in recent months to assure it has the human resources required to meet demand. That said, warehouse workers have expressed concern about safety protocols as they rush to meet a surge in holiday orders. Bloomberg reports that employees at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, NY, have sued the company, alleging that managers at the facility have reinstituted productivity quotas despite a promise by the company not to do so in order to mitigate the risks of COVID-19 transmission.

Hospitals have reported an increase in cases of the virus in 44 states and Washington, D.C. over the past week, according to a Washington Post report. Confirmed cases of people infected with the virus passed 64,000 yesterday, the highest one-day number going back to July. More than 216,000 Americans have died.

Amazon is not the only retailer looking to spread out its holiday deals. Walmart, this week, announced “Black Fridays For Days,” a series of three promotions intended to drive sales and safely space out traffic in the chain’s stores and on walmart.com.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What impact do you expect Prime Day and promotions run by retailers this week to have on their Christmas season sales? Do you expect the resurgence of COVID-19 cases to have a significant dampening effect on holiday revenues?

Braintrust

"The holiday is starting earlier than ever and spend is going to be more spread out across the fourth quarter. This is both a good and bad thing for retailers."