From July 12-13, Amazon held its annual Prime Day event, and this year’s sales marathon couldn’t have gone better for the ecommerce behemoth. As outlined in Adweek, it was the biggest Prime Day for Amazon in the company’s history, with roughly 100,000 items sold every minute for a total of 300 million products purchased worldwide.

The impact from Prime Day was so large that it lifted other retailers too, as shoppers looked to the competition for additional sales. In the US alone, according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index, consumers laid out nearly $12 billion across the retail sector over the two-day period, representing an 8.5% increase over the previous Prime Day last year.

One likely reason that things went so well for Prime Day this year is the current inflationary market, which has driven up the prices on most items across industries, leading more and more consumers to consider bargain hunting. Amazon claims that the discounts it offered during the event saved consumers around $1.7 billion in total. One report pegs the average discount across both days of the event at about 20%, with some of the top shopping categories including computers and electronics, office supplies, and clothing/fashion accessories. There was an increase in the volume and discount level for gift cards as well. 

There were numerous promotional campaigns to spark awareness or to remind consumers of the upcoming Prime Day sales, and Amazon held a Prime Day stream leveraging Amazon influencers, which garnered around 100 million views. While many brands took advantage of Prime Day, advertisers can’t rely on brand loyalty in a market where more consumers have become cost conscious and are concerned that a recession is looming.

According to Interpret’s New Media Measure®, Amazon shoppers are even more likely than average consumers to be on the hunt for a sale. 43% of the Amazon base reports a tendency to buy products that are on sale or that they have a coupon for, whereas that figure stands at 38% of the general population. Given how successful Prime Day has been for Amazon, there’s a chance that the company will be holding a second Prime Day event in the fall exclusively for Prime members. While not officially announced, the fall timing could prove interesting since many consumers often wait for Black Friday sales to buy major items.