Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) has announced the dates for its Prime Day 2021. It’s also offering some early deals and a way to earn a $10 credit.
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Dates announced for Amazon Prime Day
Amazon Prime day will be held June 21 and 22, the earliest the online retailer has held the event since it started holding it. Amazon typically holds Prime Day over the summer, but last year, it postponed the event until October due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said last year's Prime Day was its best over.
Prime Day has been going on since 2015, and according to CNN, it only makes up approximately 1% to 2% of the online retailer's annual sales. Most of the company's sales during the event are exclusively for Prime members who pay $120 per year for access to free shipping, TV shows, movies and music. The annual Amazon Prime Day aims to build loyalty among Prime subscribers and convince others to sign up for the program.
According to Amazon Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani, the online retailer will offer more than 2 million deals to Prime members this year, more than it has ever offered before. However, Amazon probably won't be the only place to find deals during the company's Prime Day event. USA Today reports that RetailMeNot found that over 350 retailers held their own sales events during Amazon's Prime event last year.
Amazon faces scrutiny
Amazon is also using Prime Day to demonstrate how merchants can benefit from selling products via its website. Subscribers will have the opportunity to secure a $10 credit for Prime Day if they spend at least $10 at certain small businesses between June 7 and June 20. The online retailer said the offer is part of its plans to invest $100 million into boosting small businesses.
Keri Cusick, head of small business empowerment at Amazon, said during the press event announcing Prime Day on Tuesday that this year's event is "our biggest promotion for small business sellers in our history."
The online retailer has been facing increased scrutiny from lawmakers about its dominance over smaller merchants on its platform. The District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against Amazon last week. The antitrust case alleges that the company's contracts keep merchants from selling their goods at lower prices on other online marketplaces. However, Amazon claims that "sellers set their own prices for the products they offer in our store."
Amazon is part of the Entrepreneur Index, which tracks 60 of the largest publicly traded companies managed by their founders or their founders' families.
