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June 18, 2025
Why Did Amazon Double Its Prime Day Event to 4 Days?
Amazon announced plans to expand its annual Prime Day event to four days, up from two traditionally.
The event, reserved for Prime members, will take place this year from July 8 through July 11 and span 26 countries.
“We’re extending it to four days because our members have told us they just need more time to shop the deals,” Jamil Ghani, Amazon vice president of worldwide Prime, told Reuters.
The event remains a key tool for Amazon to incentivize sign-ups for its subscription service Prime.
When the first Prime Day was held on a single day in the U.S. on July 15, 2015, Amazon said its goal was to offer an event that would rival Black Friday, and it has since evolved into a blockbuster commercial for the selling platform. Amazon has expanded the event to more days, rolled out many early-access and invite-only deals, and expanded its reach to over 20 countries. Last year, Amazon enlisted Megan Thee Stallion, who released a music video featuring “It’s Prime Day,” an original song.
U.S. shoppers spent $14.2 billion during Amazon’s Prime Day event in 2024 (July 16-17), up 11% year-over-year, according to Adobe Analytics.
The e-commerce giant often faces competing sales events from Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and others looking to take advantage of shoppers seeking out deals without the need for a paid membership.
In its statement, Amazon is promising “big deals and huge savings across more than 35 categories” during the upcoming four-day Prime Day event while also offering access to several early deals, including 30% off many of Amazon’s own household and fashion brands, as well as savings from independent sellers on the platform.
Amazon’s shift to a four-day event comes as the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday reported U.S. retail sales fell more than expected in May, weighed down by a decline in motor vehicle purchases as a rush to beat potential tariff-related price hikes ebbed. Economists continue to forecast a slowdown in the second half as tariffs revive inflationary pressures.”
Tariff announcements have had a clear impact on the timing of large-ticket purchases, notably autos, but there are few signs yet that tariffs are leading to a general pullback in consumer spending,” Michael Pearce, deputy chief economist at Oxford Economics, told Reuters. “We expect a more marked slowdown to take hold in the second half of the year, as tariffs begin to weigh on real disposable incomes.”
Discussion Questions
Why do you suspect Amazon extended Prime Day to four days from two?
How should competitors respond?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Mark Ryski
Founder, CEO & Author, HeadCount Corporation
Mohamed Amer, PhD
CEO & Strategic Board Advisor, Strategy Doctor
Allison McCabe
Director Retail Technology, enVista
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There are a few reasons. First, consumers are generally taking a bit longer to consider and make purchases, so a longer span facilitates this. Second, many rivals now offer their own deal periods which last for a week or so, so Amazon is being responsive to the competitive environment. Third, this year’s Prime Day is close to the Fourth of July holiday week, so it’s helpful to give people a bit more time as they return to normal after the break.
Great summation. Amazon likes to experiment. I suspect if this is successful we will see more four day deal periods. If not, we drop back to two.
We’ve seen global shopping festivals increase in duration in recent years. Alibaba’s 2024 Singles ‘Day’ was a weeks-long event.
Doubling the length of Prime Day lets Amazon:
Stay top-of-mind as a destination for deals as more shoppers seek valueMaximize revenue during a period that historically has been slowerEase supply chain strain across the 26 countries that participateGive customers more time to shop ahead of back-to-school (when analysts warn of potential price hikes and product shortages)Refine systems over a longer period so they’re optimized in time for the holidaysExtending Prime Day will also attract more B2B revenue. More brands will advertise across Amazon’s retail media touchpoints to reach customers while they shop.
Customers are on vacation in July? No problem. Let’s remove hassles, give them 4 days instead of 2.
So people would ask that very question? Honestly, few have mastered so well the practice of having the media do much of their advertsing for them….I see we’re still falling for it.
It will be interesting to see the difference in sales for a four-day sale (versus a two-day sale). Will there be double the sales? Or, will it be the same, just spread out over the extra days? I predict it’s somewhere in the middle, leaning toward double. And why wouldn’t Amazon try this? (Rhetorical question!)
I’d place money on 2 days delivering something like 1.7 times 1 day revenue; 3 days delivering perhaps 2.2 times 1 day; and four days delivering maybe 3 times 1 day. Decreasing returns is a real thing with such events.
I’ll bet a buck that sales over time will be the same, and earnings will suffer
But we’ll never know….’cuz nobody knows what their earninga are anyway.
Zing. That’s absolutely true… I can’t believe that Amazon shareholders haven’t demanded better reporting…that they are still allowed to hide the performance of their retail-like losses.
Amazon is extending Prime Days because it works. While I have little doubt that extending the sale will produce incremental sales, it will be interesting to see by how much since some of the sales will merely be spread over four instead of two days. It’s smart for Amazon to do this given the tariff concerns and waning consumer sentiment. As for competitors…they have been dealing with Prime Days for years, and I have no doubt that the biggest players will be launching counter attacks. Let the games begin!
Full disclaimer to start — I have no inside knowledge. We have seen, though, a pattern of attempting to find some type of profit — any type – from retail-like sales. Further, they are also likely seeing decreasing sales with only one or two days so more days are needed to hit artificial metric goals. Thus, my own believe is there is no solid business foundation — no vision for how this moves the business forward. Why do it? Because managers and executives need to hit metric targets. Thus, it is a type of gaming of the metric programs rarely discussed though found in almost every business today.
In addition to the reasons cited by other panelists, extra days mean extra time for Amazon to execute the delivery logistics of a big event while maintaining its service promise.
They’re just trying to buy sales. I’m not quite sure how many ways the industry will try to change demand with sales events before they get down to real forecasting
Probably because they can… Based on all of the uncertainty that everyone is feeling right now, why not get customers to spend more now since we don’t know what the future will look like.
In extending Prime Day to four days, Amazon likely hopes to increase customer engagement and frequency of shopping. By extending the period, customers are encouraged to make more impulse purchases and can discover deals they may have otherwise missed. This creates a sense of urgency and excitement, resulting in increased traffic to the platform and an increase in sales.
Amazon likely has hard data showing a 100% increase in this sales promotional period will yield sales and ROI well above the exposure risks involved. And if it doesn’t meet their performance goals, it will be back in some other formula. Competitors would be wise to assume someone did the homework and act accordingly.
Yes Brad. Amazon has the data no one else has. And they use it. It may be an experiment this year, but Amazon has some data that projects 4 days will work or they wouldn’t be running the experiment.
Every year retailers advertise One Day Sales that last longer than that one day. Or a big weekend sale that flows into the next week. Amazon obviously feels it can make a 2-day event even better by expanding it to four days. If it works next year we could see a full week of Prime Days. Like it or not, this is one retail event shoppers look forward to each year.
Four days allow Amazon to extend the news cycle and media coverage. While people may be on vacation during July 4th week, Amazon is strategically exploiting leisure psychology—when consumers are in vacation mode, they’re more likely to make impulse purchases and have time to browse deals they might skip during busy weekdays. Going to four-day matches and longer promotional events by others, but it’s akin to what happened in 2022 when Amazon added a second Prime Day event. This represents Amazon’s promotional creep—first, they added a second annual event, now they’re extending the duration. It’s a pattern of needing more promotional “real estate” to achieve the same impact.
This extension may also signal weakness rather than strength. When your signature event needs 100% more time to generate comparable results, you’re essentially admitting that consumer attention has become more expensive to capture, and the per-day intensity is declining. Amazon may be finding that achieving and sustaining peak attention is increasingly difficult.
The attention cycle for e-commerce is accelerating, and companies need to adjust accordingly. Amazon has built Prime Day into a cultural event—something it created—and now ironically has to work harder to maintain mindshare in the very category it pioneered. It’s like a hit TV show needing longer episodes to maintain ratings.
A tale as old as time…In my experience, the practice of extending sales events leads to diminishing returns as the customer delays purchases on the promise of the next big sale. The next step is adding more events.
Lots of great comments. I’m inclined to think that there’s a large element of getting media, eyeballs, and visibility. PR is one of Amazons core capabilities
There once was thing called a One Day Sale. There was one of them, and it was hugely successful. Clearly, here was a tactic that needed to be repeated. So then there were two One Day Sales. Then three. Then four. And One Day Sales became Two Day Sales, even if they were still called One Day Sales. And then came some version of a “pre” One Day Sale kickoff. And then……you get the picture. Customers are brilliant in planning around known upcoming sale events. They start as offering incremental sales and margin $$$, but eventually become margin give-away. I really hope that Amazon does not get sucked into the same vortex that other retailers have become hostage to.
Nailed it!