Amazon Prime Day is back, sort of. Prime Day usually happens in the summer and this year was no different, except with an interesting twist, it is getting a sequel. The Amazon Prime Early Access is happening now, Oct. 11^th– 12^th. It’s an unprecedented move for the company and a sign of how the ecommerce giant feels about the holiday season. Other like Best Buy, Target, and Walmart have also come out with early holiday deals and it has effectively kicked off Black Friday in October.`

This year’s Prime Day was another huge success and has become a showcase of the company’s pull in the retail landscape. The economy has struggled this year and it makes sense that they would go back to the well to generate another wave of revenue. The Prime Day platform and the largest discounts are usually centered around Amazon branded products with third party products getting smaller deals overall. The Early Access sale is following a similar formula, yet there are some major changes to this event. Sales will be geared toward gadgets, electronics, and toys, instead of the home appliances and household goods that were featured in July. This is in line with what we usually see for the holidays, and it frames this event as a start to Black Friday shopping.

Black Friday has been creeping to earlier start times every year, yet what we are seeing now is on a different scale. This is a collective effort by retailers with some beginning their sales last week. None of the current deals run from now until Black Friday, so we are likely to see short-spanned sales pop up sporadically over the next two months. These early deals will help prevent supply chain bottlenecks that have occurred too often in late November. The sheer volume of products on offer could incentivize consumers to complete their shopping early, leading to fewer purchases in the post-Thanksgiving window. This is important to remember when comparing year over year revenue for the holiday shopping season.

Retailers like Amazon are anticipating the holiday season to be powerful, and they clearly do not want to waste any time getting their products in front of consumers. It has only been a few months since the last Prime Day and all these sales could lead to shopper burnout. We have already seen this in our recent #CSGpolls on Twitter with over 80% of respondents feeling this year’s Black Friday will be lackluster. This has become a year for experimentation, and we will have to wait and see if it bears fruit. If the Early Access sale is a success, maybe we will see three Prime Day sales next year.