Americans Spent Nearly $12 Billion During This Year’s Amazon Prime Day

Prime members purchased more than 300 million items worldwide during Prime Day 2022, up from roughly 250 million in 2021, according to new data released by Amazon on Thursday. According to the e-commerce giant, this year’s event was the biggest Prime Day event in the company’s history.

According to Amazon, which didn’t disclose its internal numbers for total sales from the two-day event, Prime members worldwide purchased more than 100,000 items per minute during this year’s event. In the U.S., specifically, Amazon said that Americans purchased more than 60,000 items per minute during this year’s event.

The event, which ran Tuesday and Wednesday, comes at a time when Americans are dealing with rising inflation. Amazon noted that consumers flocked to the site to get a head start on back-to-school and to stock up on home essentials. Some of the best-selling categories this Prime Day were Amazon devices, consumer electronics and home, the company said.

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According to an early read of the full 48-hour, 2022 event by market research company Numerator, the average order size was $52.26, up from $44.75 in the same reporting period on Prime Day 2021. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of households shopping Prime Day placed two or more separate orders, bringing the average household spend to roughly $144.56, Numerator reported.

The consumer-sourced company also saw that most Prime Day items (58%) sold for under $20, while 5% sold for over $100. The top categories consumers said they purchased were household essentials (29%), health & beauty (28%) and consumer electronics (27%), Numerator said.

This data coincides with new numbers from Adobe’s Digital Economy Index report. According to Adobe, Americans spent $11.9 billion across the two-day event, representing 8.5% growth compared with last year. The first day saw U.S. consumers spend $6 billion, while the second day came in at $5.9 billion.

“With the second Prime Day also seeing strong gains, retailers were able to generate approximately $12 billion in online spend, across the two-day event,” Pat Brown, VP at Adobe, said in a statement. With ‘back-to-school’ around the corner and promotional discounts being quite favorable for consumers; we saw accelerated growth momentum for days that have historically produced significant spending. It’s apparent that consumers are incredibly price conscious, and it will be important for retailers to leverage price effectively, in order unlock new growth potential online.”