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Amazon Prime Day 2016 Coming In July, Features Black Friday Savings

By Nick Younker
Published on: 07:13 PST, Jun 30, 2016

Amazon Prime is bringing back its mega-popular Prime Day and giving its customers the chance to take part in Black Friday savings in July. For those who are wondering, Amazon Prime Day will take place on July 12 this year.

Amazon Prime is no stranger to giving its customers deals that are comparable to the Wal-Mart deals that people see every day at their discount superstores. But USA Today reports that Amazon Prime Day is going to feature some of the huge discounts that customers are usually accustomed to seeing on Black Friday, just before the seasonal holidays launch every year the day after Thanksgiving.

If anyone needs something to help them understand just how popular Amazon Prime Day is, then just take a look at the numbers. Last year, Amazon Prime Day sold 34.4 million items. That beats Amazon Prime’s actual Black Friday numbers by quite a distance.

In 2015, Amazon Prime Day took place on July 15 and put the online retailer in the winner’s circle over all other online retailers. There are some criticisms, however, with people and industry leaders claiming that brands taking part in Amazon Prime Day are just looking to clear out their inventory and make way for a new product or two.

That being said, there are still many people out there who do not care if inventory is being liquidated. If it is something they want and they can get it at major discounts on Amazon Prime Day, then they are going to buy it no matter what.

Greg Greeley is the vice president at Amazon Prime, and he also seems to share the same sentiments when he spoke with USA Today.

“A certain deal that might seem weird to one customer might seem wonderful to another. That’s part of the fun of Prime Day — discovering these unique items,” Greeley told USA Today.

There is also a response to Amazon Prime Day from Wal-Mart, which has been having a lot of trouble keeping up with Amazon Prime lately in the market. The online shopping market, that is.

The brick-and-mortar company is now making sure that they are able to keep up in the retail market by giving their online store a little focus as well. Amazon Prime has been able to carve out a major share of Wal-Mart’s profits by selling their goods online, which has them wondering if they should do the same thing. The answer to that, of course, is yes.

Wal-Mart has announced, in response to Amazon Prime Day, that they are also going to give their customers a special deal that will compete with Amazon Prime. They are offering their potential customers a chance to sign up for a new program, ShippingPass, with a free 30-day trial of the program. After that, ShippingPass will cost $49 a year, which is about half of the cost of Amazon Prime, which prices at $99 a year or $8.99 a month.

Even though Wal-Mart’s ShippingPass is half the cost of Amazon Prime per year, it does not offer all of the content that Amazon Prime offers. That content would also include the all-you-can-watch video streaming buffet, music streaming buffet, and other perks that go along with the subscription.

There is also a sale that Wal-Mart will be offering that will start on July 1 and passes up Amazon Prime Day by keeping it active for 90 days. But neither Wal-Mart nor Amazon Prime have announced what kind of products or deals will be offered on their events, at least not yet.

Amazon Prime Day launches on July 12 and will feature a pre-Prime Day buildup for the event with deals during the week before.

[Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Amazon]

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