Prime Day is Amazon’s annual deal event exclusively for Prime members, featuring epic deals on top brands and small businesses. What started in 2015 as a way to celebrate Amazon’s 20th birthday, Prime Day turned into an annual ritual due to its massive success.

Despite its name, Prime Day is held over two days with 48 hours’ worth of exclusive discounts and limited-time savings. With thousands of deals, customers are bound to find something worth buying. 

But Prime Day isn’t just about those 2 days. The anticipation of the event and promotions of deals start about 2-3 weeks prior to the actual dates. The days up to the mega sale event are full of excitement with brands promoting their deals and products to grab the eyeballs of the Prime members. 

This year’s excitement levels were no different.  

We, at PiWheel, used our competitor and market intelligence tool to analyze Prime Day for India- one of the fastest growing eCommerce regions in the world- and found some very interesting data points that will be useful lessons for brands. 

Prime Day 2022- PiWheel Analysis 

What we have covered: 

1. Shakers of Prime Weeks 2022: biggest gainers in sales rank 
2. The promotions supported sales revenue and conversions of the shakers 
3. Top selling products in the top selling categories 
4. Some popular categories deep-dive 
5. Emerging categories in the marketplace 
6. Key takeaways 

The top 4 products (by retail sales) in the 5 shakers categories:

Apart from consumer electronics, there were some categories that were extremely popular among the consumers of India. These include everyday essential items, beauty & personal care, clothing & accessories, and pet food.

Let’s take a deeper look: 

1. Snack Foods
   

   As per our market intelligence tool, the sub-category ‘Snack Cakes and Pastries’ saw the highest lift (+105%) in snack foods from 2021 Prime weeks, indicating increased stickiness and successful penetration of Amazon’s groceries’ initiatives. 

2. Pet Foods

   

   Cat canned foods saw the largest Prime Day lift of any pet category on Amazon, with shoppers purchasing nearly 20x as many items during Prime Weeks 2022 as compared to 2021.  
   

   Chappi brand’s ‘Chappi Adult Dry Dog Food, Chicken & Rice, 20kg Pack’ saw the highest sales in the dog food category. 

    
3. Beauty and Personal Care
   Prime weeks was the perfect time to stock up on all the monsoon skincare and haircare essentials for Indian consumers. The ‘Body Skin Care’ category saw a jump of +26% while the ‘Hair Care’ category jumped by +17% in retail sales from 2021 Prime weeks.

   We also noticed jumps in ad spend for the ‘Oral Care’ category while the ‘Facial Skin Care’ experienced a 95% jump in ad spend.

   

    

   There were other categories too which saw massive sales growth compared to 2021 such as Diapers & diapering accessories (+17.51%), Men’s Shoes (+31.49%). 

There are some categories that although didn’t experience as huge retail jumps as the shakers, saw a massive increase in growth from last year’s Prime weeks.  

2022 Prime Day is over but that doesn’t mean you wrap the event in the closet! Let’s take a look at a few quick tips so you can apply Prime Day learnings to your Amazon Business in the future:  

1. Data is the key: There is no denying the fact that data is of utmost importance for every campaign. Brands can only grow when they have the correct data at hand to analyze the rights and the wrongs. Take time to examine the same for this year’s Prime event. This will help build a strategy for the upcoming sale events. 

2. Start planning for future sale events now: The upcoming ‘Great Indian Festival’ on Amazon is going to be a huge one. Get your creatives in place, get your inventory in order, and test new ad formats (and PiWheel can help!). 

3. Monitor customer reviews and ratings thoroughly: More items purchased increase the chances of getting more feedback from customers which is a big opportunity to understand how your target audience is perceiving your product. Since 9 out of 10 customers read reviews before buying, it becomes all the more important to monitor the same. Take quick action on things that might be leading to negative reviews such as misleading descriptions/ photos. 

Data Source: PiWheel’s market intelligence tool

Data timeline: Jul 17 – Jul 30, 2022 vs Jul 18 – Jul 31, 2021