The Magic of Amazon Prime Day
Why is an otherwise sane person shopping at 3 a.m.?
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Amazon sold $12.9 billion worth of stuff during its Prime Day sale last year. I bet they will surpass that in 2024.
I helped out at just after 3 a.m. here at my sister’s house in Massachusetts. There was no need to set an alarm. I was up at 2:30 waiting for Prime Day to go live. I’m pretty tired now, because I didn’t get back to sleep until around 4.
Here is what I ordered:
A European Travel Plug Adapter, for our trip to France next month. It is on sale for $8—a 33-percent discount. (This actually is a better price than the $9 I paid in the middle of the night. Ah well.)
Echo Show 5 (3rd Gen, 2023 release), which I will probably take to France in order to have Alexa with us by the bedstand. It’s 44 percent off, selling for $50 instead of $90. Sweet!
Systane COMPLETE PF Multi-Dose Preservative Free Dry Eye Drops - 36 percent off, selling for $12.83.
Contigo West Loop Stainless Steel Travel Mug with AUTOSEAL Lid, 16 oz. Only available in black—no problem. My usual travel mug for keeping coffee warm is somewhere, not sure where, maybe in storage.
My sister Stephanie and I are headed to breakfast now at the Minuteman Diner in Bedford, Mass. I hope they don’t have WiFi. I need to pace myself.
What’s the appeal of Prime Day?
I’m sure it has to do with the fact it’s time limited, two days only.
I remember Mom and Dad telling us about crazy sales at Filene’s Basement in Boston, where they would scope out suits for Dad’s junior-executive job. When the doors opened, they would race to the exact table where the suits were and grab them before the slower shoppers even got started. There were no changing rooms.
Is that why I was shopping at 3 a.m. this morning? Could be.
R. Austin Masterson, an Amazon exec who knows a lot about the Prime program, will be my guest on an upcoming episode of The Kindle Chronicles. We have an interview set for a week from today, July 23rd, by which time he will have a full report on how Prime Day 2024 went.