How successful was Amazon’s “Prime Early Access Sale”?

Last week, Amazon launched its Belgian marketplace and made headlines with the launch of an insurance marketplace in the UK. The Hamburg, Germany-based fashion marketplace AboutYou claims to have won large brands with total turnovers surmounting hundreds of millions of Euros, as customers for its in-house shop software. Meanwhile, the Otto Group, to which AboutYou belongs, reports a 13.5% decline in sales in the first half of 2022. 

Updates: Amazon

A Gloomy Forecast for Amazon’s Q3 Results?

Experts are skeptical in anticipation of Amazon’s sales figures from Q3 2022, which the corporation will release later this week. Although customers continued to spend money in the past quarter, current trends indicate that most of this expenditure has not been spent on e-commerce, as has been the case so far. These concerns are largely based on a supposedly declining online shopping demand, as inflation rates cause customers to reduce their shopping to the bare minimum. One indicator of Amazon’s potentially poor figures, is the comparatively weak performance of the second Prime Day this year. Amazon’s actual results will show whether the concerns are justified. Our remarks will be available on  LinkedIn on Friday.

Launch of Amazon in Belgium

On October 18, 2022, the Belgian marketplace Amazon.com.be opened its virtual doors. Belgian consumers can now shop in French and Flemish, as well as in English, from a selection of more than 180 million products from global and local brands in over 30 categories. Amazon Prime is also available for €2.99 per month and offers free, next-day Prime delivery in Belgium, as well as access to Prime Video and Prime Gaming, among other benefits.

Amazon.co.uk Opens Insurance Marketplace

The group opened its first insurance marketplace “Amazon Insurance Store” in the UK last week. There are currently three home insurances on offer, according to Amazon, which plans to include additional insurances next year. Similar to price comparison pages, the platform is intended to provide information, customer reviews, and ratings on the tariffs of various insurance companies. The “Amazon Insurance Store” also strives to be more transparent and user-friendly than competing portals. 

Updates: E-Commerce

Google Shopping Soon with More Images

The product search on Google is to become more visual and user-friendly in the future. Google plans to display not only links, but also images, for searches with a purchase intention (i.e., a search for “shop” + product). Google shoppers will also benefit from dynamic filters that enable a targeted search for brands, sellers, and offers, among other things. Another novelty is that the product description will be visible directly on the page with search results. The changes will only be available for desktop users in the US for the time being, a launch date of the function in Europe is not yet known. 

Is AboutYou Building a Competitor Platform to Shopify?

The online marketplace AboutYou, which specializes in fashion, stated that its own SaaS solution “SCAYLE” recorded new customer growth with a sales volume of around €100 million in 2022. According to AboutYou, companies such as the Deichmann Group, Fielmann, s.Oliver Group, DefShop, and FC Bayern relocated their online shops to SCAYLE this year. The platform’s three-part service portfolio includes commerce technology, online marketing packages, and commerce operations. How competitive SCAYLE will become in a market dominated by companies such as Shopify, SAP, and Salesforce remains to be seen.

Walmart Launches One Month Black Friday Deal Event in Early November

Although Black Friday is only on November 25, 2022, Walmart will herald the deal event in the U.S. this year on Monday, November 7. Walmart’s “Black Friday Deals for Days” campaign is scheduled to take place in four stages over a period of one month. Every Monday in November, new sales campaigns start in the online shop and two days later also in the company’s retail stores. Members of the Walmart+ program will also have earlier access to the offers. The deal event ends with offers for Cyber Monday on November 28, 2022. There were also “Early Black Friday Deals” on Amazon in 2021, but so far no dates have been confirmed for Amazon Black Friday deal events this year.

Walmart Expands its Social Commerce

Walmart announced last week the release of a beta version of its “Walmart Creator” platform, with the aim to expand the company’s reach in social commerce. The portal allows influencers to earn commission on Walmart products by sharing product links on social media platforms. Creators can apply for beta access before the holiday season. In 2023, “Walmart Creator” will be fully introduced. 

Will TikTok Soon Compete with Amazon and Walmart?

Current job postings indicate that TikTok is looking for new employees to build an e-commerce infrastructure in the US. The social media platform states that it wants to develop a new and better e-commerce experience through this step, and at the same time further promote its own growth. Many of the positions are advertised for their Seattle office, where Amazon’s headquarters are also located. The move would put the social media platform in direct competition with Amazon and Walmart.

Sales Decline at Otto

According to its own statements, the Otto Group recorded a 13.5% decline in sales in Germany in the first half of the 2022 fiscal year. The online giant justifies this slowdown with the current grim economic situation. The company’s business abroad, however, such as in the US, is performing better, with reported growth of more than 8%. Overall, international sales fell by “only” 5.6% in the first half of 2022. Additionally, in view of the rising prices, which can only be passed on to customers to a fraction of the extent due to inflation, Otto is not in a position to achieve the same figures from last year.

What Caught our Attention

Amazon now also enables A/B testing of bullet points and product descriptions. This means that all content elements can now be tested on the PDP.

The virtual fitting of glasses and shoes directly on the product detail page should soon also be possible on European Amazon markets. This feature is already available on Amazon.com.

On Amazon, product suggestions are displayed on product images: this function has been around for a few months, but now it seems to be appearing more and more frequently. Customers can purchase similar items from other brands by clicking on the images on the product detail pages. Amazon apparently uses images uploaded by the brands themselves for this purpose. The criteria used to select the displayed products are currently unknown. Our senior e-commerce consultant Joshua Brzynczek has published his assessment of the feature in a LinkedIn post. 

Comment: Analysis of Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale

In mid-October, Amazon hosted a “second Prime Day,” known as the Prime Early Access Sale. While the online giant described the deal event as a good start to the holiday season, US media are reporting that the results are lagging behind Prime Day in July.

With our Amazon analytics tool, Remdash, we have analyzed the data of the EU5 markets. The numbers of the deal days were each compared with an average day of the previous month.

• Compared to the EU5 Amazon markets, the Prime Early Access Sale achieved the largest increase in sales in the UK marketplace: +354%. The slightest increase was recorded in Germany: + 189% 
• In all countries, Prime Day was more successful than the Prime Early Access Sale, with one exception: France. Sales increased by 206% during the October deal day, up from 194% during the July Prime Day. But overall, we agree with the results of the US media: Prime Day was the most successful sales event so far in 2022.
• In terms of sales, day 2 of the Prime Early Access Sale was more successful than day 1 in Spain and Italy. The Spaniards seem to have used the holiday on October 12 (day 2) for online shopping – or, they, like the Italians, have simply waited a little longer for better offers.

All in all, the Prime Early Access sale was not a failure – but it certainly did not exceed expectations. The current economic situation, the rather late communication of the deal event, and the upcoming Black Friday deals led to spending restraint among customers.

Fact of the Week

Amazon is the best-known online marketplace in all the markets we investigated. Italy is the front-runner here: 99% of Italians know Amazon. (Source: Amazon Shopper Report 2022, Remazing & Appinio).

Remdash: Vendor & Seller Central Revenue

Remdash enables the tracking of a brand’s own revenues from Vendor Central and Seller Central. Among other benefits, with Remdash users can:

• Filter Ordered Revenue vs. Shipped COGS
• Compare product groups with one another
• Compare individual ASINs with one another
• Compare global sales with sales on individual national marketplaces 

Interested in Remdash? 
Just click here to schedule a personal product demo with our team.

Top 5 Amazon Keywords

These are the top 5 most searched keywords by country from October 16 – 22, 2022.

October 31st is Halloween: Amazon customers from all markets were looking for costumes and decorations for the holiday of horrors. The word “Halloween” only appears once in the top Italian keywords – there, the celebration does not seem to have as much significance.