It and similar summer shopping days of big box stores have secured a permanent place in the shopping calendar alongside Black Friday. Still, analysts say average order size on Prime Day has declined from a few years ago and revenue growth has slowed. With Americans concerned about inflation, it may not be the ideal time to persuade people to buy things for no good reason.
It’s not easy to see a shop flash in the pan until it’s over. But there are a few clues.
The first is if a company spends a lot of money on promotions or advertisements to get our attention. Wish was the top advertiser on Facebook and Instagram for a while. Groupon’s marketing budget was so high that the company argued with regulators over an accounting number that made the company’s spending look less ugly.
Unsurprisingly, a company that spends a lot of money to get our attention will have it, at least for a while. But when our interest fades along with the pitches, it’s a sign that this was just a fad.
Second, it’s tempting to believe that a bright idea in one shopping area can apply to all the others.
It was a smart innovation to sell directly to shoppers products that are annoying to buy the conventional way, such as razors, mattresses and glasses. But when companies started selling cheese puffs and leggings in this way, the shopping spree had gone too far.
Some novelties have stuck, or at least have left a lasting impression. Kodali cited Etsy, the website for handmade goods, as a relatively new and enduring shopping habit, along with online furniture retailer Wayfair. Even if Wish never becomes an e-commerce superstar as its backers once envisioned, Amazon and Shein, the trendy clothing app of recent years, have proven the appeal of selling goods directly from Chinese factories.
I won’t try to predict what the next online shopping craze might be – but there will be one. People are more likely to take a gamble by buying something from a company we’ve never heard of. The flip side is that with so much of everything online, almost nothing screams NEW! NOVEL! feels compelling for a very long time.
