Earlier this week, I talked about the mid-summer online showdown between Walmart over Amazon. The results are in. Amazon didn’t get beat yesterday. They got humiliated!
Amazon spent much time building up Amazon Prime Day, July 15, to be a summer version of Black Friday. They were supposed to offer deep discounts exclusively to Amazon Prime customers on wanted items. I guess many items weren’t wanted. The items on sale included knee braces, beer coolies, nose clippers and cat-training aids. They offered all the good stuff people fight in stores over (note the sarcastic tone). To say Amazon Prime Day was an underwhelming and disappointing experience is an understatement. One shopper tweeted how it felt more like April Fool’s Day than Black Friday. ?Another tweet joked about a sale on toys like Rock Em’ Robots. Rock Em’ Robots were popular back in the 1960s and ’70s. Another shopper was surprised Walmart had far better deals than Amazon did. Yahoo Finance did a comparison score chart between Amazon and Walmart based on categories such as relevance and shoppers’ experience. Walmart won the comparison game 14-8.
Maybe that’s because Walmart offered discounts to everybody, not just those in the Amazon Prime crowd. Maybe it’s because Walmart offered discounts on everyday products that people use in 2015, instead of items dug up from Uncle Jephthah’s yard sale from 1976. Walmart’s sale items included smartphones, TVs, printers, mattresses and bedding, and women’s clothing. Their discounts were on products that would’ve been pretty expensive to buy otherwise. For example, a 55-inch HDTV from Walmart would have cost around $400, half the regular cost. I’m not a Walmart fan, but they got it right this time. I think Amazon Prime Day was the biggest online flop since Apple Maps back in 2012. I hope Amazon learns a lesson from this. If you’re going to hype a day up like this, open it to everybody and give the people products worth buying. Do you think they’ll ever be an Amazon Prime Day 2?