Amazon Prime Day to battle falling consumer spending

Amazon's upcoming Prime Day sale will battle waning consumer spending as shoppers continue to deal with high inflation.

The big picture: Like in past years, Prime Day is forecast to be one of the year's biggest shopping events — with billions of dollars spent at Amazon and other retailers expected to run competing sales.

Driving the news: Amazon said Wednesday that its sale, which also unofficially kicks off the back-to-school shopping season, will be held July 11-12.

• Target, Best Buy, Kohl's and Macy's held sales during Prime Day week last year while Walmart had a rollback clearance sale.
• The announcement comes on the same day the FTC sued Amazon, alleging the e-commerce giant enrolled customers in Prime without their consent.

By the numbers: Prime Day week 2022 drove $22.4 billion in overall U.S. online sales including $11.9 billion during the 48-hour Prime Day period, per Adobe Analytics data.

• Sales during the two-day event in 2022 increased 8.5% year-over-year and accounted for nearly a third of July's sales, Adobe found.
• 63% of Americans have a Prime account down slightly from 65% last year, according to a RetailMeNot survey of 1,000 adults.

Yes, but: Inflation is impacting consumers' Prime Day plans as many continue to cut back on discretionary spending, RetailMeNot found.

• The average Prime Day shopper plans to spend $250 at Amazon and competitor sales this year — down from $388 last year and $594 in 2021, the deal site's survey shows.

Meanwhile, 76% of Prime members said in the survey that they plan to shop for school items during Prime Day and related sales, compared to 42% of non-Prime members.

Flashback: Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 to reward Prime members. Prime Day was held in July every year before the pandemic and returned to July in 2022.

Amazon Prime Day sale 2023

Driving the news: The 48-hour sale kicks off July 11 at midnight PT (3 a.m. ET) for Prime members, Amazon said in its announcement.

• Amazon announced the addition of "invite-only deals" where Prime members have to request an invite for deals that are expected to sell out.

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