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The Almighty Buck News

Why So Much Coverage Of Amazon Prime Day? The Incentives, Of Course (theguardian.com) 129

Posted by msmash from the why-they-do-what-they-do dept.
Olivia Solon, writing for The Guardian: In July 2015, Amazon declared its own annual holiday: Amazon Prime Day. The retail giant promised deals on a wide range of products for customers signed up to its membership program, Amazon Prime. This is the second Amazon Prime Day, and it's pretty hard to miss. At the time of writing, the #PrimeDay hashtag was one of Twitter's top 10 worldwide trends. Media outlets including the Daily Mail, USA Today, the Telegraph, PC World and CNet are publishing numerous stories about the discounts on offer, and urging readers to sign up for an Amazon Prime trial. What many of those readers won't realise is that publishers are financially incentivised by Amazon to write about Prime Day. By signing up to the retail giant's affiliate programme, Amazon Associates, publishers can earn commissions from linking to products on Amazon.com.In some other news, Amazon announced on Wednesday that the self-created holiday was its biggest sales day ever, with worldwide orders rising more than 60% compared with the previous Prime Day.
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Why So Much Coverage Of Amazon Prime Day? The Incentives, Of Course More

Why So Much Coverage Of Amazon Prime Day? The Incentives, Of Course

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  • They've created enough artificial hype, that people are genuinely excited about it. At this point, people are talking about it without getting paid, because they want to.
    What I don't understand is why people want to talk about it. I checked it out multiple times yesterday, and the only notable thing I saw was that the Amazon website was painfully slow. Absolutely nothing on sale looked like a good enough deal to entice me to impulse buy.

    • It has to be better than last year, which was a complete and utter fraud. Microscopic discounts, quantities so limited that you had to be at a server terminal releasing the discount yourself in order to get them, useless items... better than black friday - only in the sense that nobody was getting punched in the face...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cdrudge ( 68377 )

        I purchased numerous items last year during Prime day including one of the LED TVs. All the deals I got in on did sell out, but I didn't employ any special technique or insider knowledge to get any of them. The only thing I did, and it wasn't a secret as many others were talking about it, was recognizing the time that the major deals were released. I believe it was 10 minutes till the top of the hour was when they were revealed. Signed in, hit refresh a few times, made purchase.

        Anyone who says that there wa

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )
      Got me to guy several PC games that I was planning to wait another year or 2 to buy. Far Cry Primal is selling on Steam for $59.99, got it for $24.99 (disk, not download) with free 2 day shipping. Got Fallout 4 for the same price, same shipping, also on disk. Of course, that's only about a $10-15 savings and I'll have to buy the season pass at some point, but I'l wait and get that on a steam sale.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ADRA ( 37398 )

        You know, most of those games just sync against Steam mandatory anyway right? You're paying for plastic. Sometimes they're bold enough to ship with steam only... I'm pretty sure Fallout 4 is steam mandatory for play / mods, but I think primal might function through Uplay, which is yet another online download service from Ubisoft. Its hard to find any AAA games these days without phone-home/updates built intro the platform. Its not my concern, but it does mean you're getting very little from a retail boxed g

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

          You know, most of those games just sync against Steam mandatory anyway right? You're paying for plastic. Sometimes they're bold enough to ship with steam only... I'm pretty sure Fallout 4 is steam mandatory for play / mods, but I think primal might function through Uplay, which is yet another online download service from Ubisoft. Its hard to find any AAA games these days without phone-home/updates built intro the platform. Its not my concern, but it does mean you're getting very little from a retail boxed game besides the collectables which I personally find an utter waste.

          The disc copies were actually about $5-10 cheaper than digital downloads, both for Fallout 4 and FC Primal. Makes no sense at all, but hey. I already use both Steam and Uplay, but if I can save a few bucks getting the disks then why not? Won't really get to play until the weekend anyway.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      I looked through the flat list of "stuff on sale" and could only wonder "who buys this shit in the first place". Useless. However, I thought to check I bunch of stuff I'm planning to buy in the next couple of months (new PC build) and discovered the power supply I had in mind had quite a nice discount -- significantly less than anything on pcpartpicker -- so I picked that up and saved $50 or so.

      I think that's the recipe: have a wishlist ahead of time, and just check the list for discounts. If you're plan

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pulzar ( 81031 )

      There was a deal for Xbox One with an extra controller, $50 gift card, 2 games, all that for $269. If you were looking to get one for the kids, it's a very good deal.

      There was some Samsonite luggage for 30% off... again, if you were looking for new luggage, it's a good deal.

      I don't know about impulse buys, but there were good deals on things that you might've been waiting to get a deal on before you do buy. If you're lucky enough to navigate to them and find them, that is. :)

    • Like all sales, there were some good deals and some bad ones. Good deals included most of Amazon's own devices (there were special prices for multiple tablets, the Paperwhite e-reader, the Fire Stick, and the Echo; Echo Tap was offered as a pre-Prime Day deal) and the TV sets. They offered 30% off a variety of luggage, also a good deal if you were in the market for it. And there were good prices on some videos and computer games.

      Some of the worst deals were on computers. They quoted huge discounts off a fic

  • Price matching. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @12:55PM (#52504487)

    They have changed their price matching policy since last year. Last year they would refund you the difference between what you paid a few days before and the Prime Day price. This year you have to order it again and then send it back. Stupid, but I guess the more hoops they make you jump through, the less refunds they have to issue.

  • ABC News Had Great Coverage (Score:3)

    by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @12:55PM (#52504489)

    ^H^H^H^H^H^ I mean shilling.

    "If the item is out of stock say "Remind me"" and you'll get a notification when it's back in stock. (Hint, that's not going to be on Prime day when the price is back to normal.

    Today Show and Good Morning America are about 30 seconds of news then the remainder trying to sell what ever Comcast/Disney movie is about to be released, "deals of the day" that really aren't. Some fluff pieces. There's always a cooking segment with a star if said movies.

    Then finish it off with a song from some artist.

  • Terrible date selection (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Prime Day on 7/12 (or 12/7 for you other people).

    Way to really blow that one, Amazon.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jlv ( 5619 )

      Yes, 7/13 would have worked much better.

      But you can tell someone just didn't get it anymore when they increased the price from $79 to $99 ... rather than $97 which would have fit better.

    • 7+12=19. Amazon win in my book.

  • What many of those readers won't realise is that publishers are financially incentivised by Amazon

    I suppose there might be a few people out there who think Daily Mail, USA Today, the Telegraph, PC World and CNet are something other than shills. Hard to believe though.

    • Publications like PC World and CNet are a mix of shill and useful information. It has been thus since trade publications were invented.

      Sometimes the shill even contains useful information, as it did with Prime Day for many people. After all, the purpose of reading those publications is for advice on what to buy. The advertising and advertorials can help with buying decisions just as much as the supposedly neutral content. You just have to read them knowing that some of the content is supported.

  • The Real Meaning... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @01:07PM (#52504579)

    As I sat at the dinner table carving my traditional Amazon Prime day roast goose with my family and friends I was reminded of the real reason for Amazon Prime day. I casually gave thanks to God that there is surplus crap in warehouses that stores cannot sell usually.

    As we toasted in the new Prime-Year and started the count down to next prime day I looked around at all my cheap crappy made-in-China goods. Life is good when you have useless garage sale junk-a-plenty.

    • Reminds me of that Mac Davis sci-fi Christmas Carol christmas special from the 70's that replaced Christmas with "Commerce Day"

      • Is Amazon trying to convince us that Jeff Bezos was born on July 13? No, my friends, that is a lie. Amazon Prime Day was originally an ancient Roman holiday called Mercatus that was held in mid-July, and it was essentially a festival to facilitate trade; merchants would gather in Rome and sell stuff at a discount. The Romans did a lot of evil things, but one thing they did not do was sell fake Chinese knockoffs. Amazon stole the holiday and is pretending they came up with it themselves! Yeah right!

        Amazon is

    • If you didn't get your Amazon Prime Day pole from an Amazon Prime Day sale, you're doing it wrong!

  • So when is prime day? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I keep hearing people talk about it coming up but nobody has said WHEN it is.

  • Sigh (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    Depends.

    I was quite looking forward to it. And then in the run-up and on the day bought nothing anyway. I briefly considered an SSD but the brand I wanted never went on sale and I'm not going to compromise just to get something cheap - I'd just buy a cheaper brand anyway.

    In fact, the only thing I "bought" was a free copy of Civ IV, available to Amazon Prime users throughout the sale. It "cost" £12.99 and no doubt classes as a sale, but I never paid a penny and it was a Steam key. And then I

  • All of the fun and none of the guilt.

  • And what incentive does Slashdot get for this provision? Rhetorical question, okay?

  • Once upon a time, there were lots of small mom-and-pop stores, each with a small but specific set of goods.

    In the not so distant future, there were lots of (not so small) supermarkets, shopping centers and malls, each with 20-100 smaller stores, that quickly realised that they are the new mom-and-pop stores, all threatened and sooner or later replaced by the one big store: amazon

    • Actually Amazon has chased me back to shopping at Barnes & Noble, because they raised their minimum order for free shipping so much that it makes a lot more sense for me to drive 40 miles to my nearest B&N to pick up a book for someone's birthday present.

  • The day wasn't the best choice. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pecosdave ( 536896 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @01:16PM (#52504657) Homepage Journal

    How do most people get paid?

    Every other week is common, at one point in history I had a roommate where we both got paid every-other week, and we were on opposite schedules, it was great when it came to keeping the kitchen stocked and shared expenses paid. Under this setup most people get paid towards the end of the week, but it could really be at any time.

    The other option is 1st and 15th, probably a little less common. In this case the time during the week is sort of randomish but if one of those dates falls on a weekend you often get paid early, meaning Friday - late in the week. I guess you could have a place pay you late, but I don't think that would pass the legal test.

    Most people have to pay rent and big expenses at the beginning of the month.

    When was Prime Day? On a Tuesday (near the beginning of a week), on the 12th. Basically Prime Day was held right before most people get paid and the twice a month folks are nearing the end of the really expensive half of the month. Brilliant! I'll bet they would have sold loads more if they would have made it the 16th.

    • I am sure they carefully chose the day.

      After all, they probably know better than anybody what the spending habits are for their customers.

      Perhaps they purposely chose the lowest volume day of the month (or even year) and figured they would A) increase sales numbers for that day and B) generate buzz (free/cheap advertising)

      • I actually contemplated the "doing it while everyone is broke on purpose" thought to keep from pushing their systems beyond the limit. It seemed reasonable, but I've been around too much management that wasn't reasonable to take that thought seriously.

        • I also considered that, but my reasoning was "maybe they are trying to be responsible by trying to make sure that people don't overextend themselves" .. but then my next thought was "yeah... right"

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I am sure they carefully chose the day.

        After all, they probably know better than anybody what the spending habits are for their customers.

        Perhaps they purposely chose the lowest volume day of the month (or even year) and figured they would A) increase sales numbers for that day and B) generate buzz (free/cheap advertising)

        Likely. Another reason is with Prime 2 day shipping, the day you order is counted as "day 0", which means if you order after 3pm or so, "day 0" is actually Wednesday.

        I suspect Tuesday was

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      nah, everyone pays with credit card on amazon anyways, they just have to think they'll have money coming soon.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ldierk ( 1270930 )
      Over here you get only paid once a month, normally at the end of the month. I did not know it is still common to be paid every other week in the U.S.A.
      • It varies. Some companies pay weekly. Some pay every other week. Some pay once or twice a month. People getting government assistance (Social Security and SSI) get paid once a month, but not all on the same day.

    • Don't most people not live paycheck-to-paycheck? Don't most people buy things off Amazon with Credit Card, rather than cashing in their paychecks for cash and then mailing Amazon a handful of bills?

      FWIW my wife and I both get paid every other week (7th and 22nd for both of us, oddly - I guess it gives accounting departments a week after the 1st and 15th).

      • I don't have a credit card. My first marriage left a bad taste in my credit was concerned, I canceled all my cards and was pretty much done with credit. I made a couple of exceptions, I'm making payments on my van, and I only did that because I had little choice.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Personally I didn't see anything other than on Amazon's site unlike last year where everyone was curious what the sales would be until Amazon unveiled its yard sale.

  • Amazon too big for its own good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @01:24PM (#52504725)

    I stopped buying from Amazon as they have grown to the point where playing games to cow people into joining their little club is more important to than competing on merit.

    Try buying star wars from Amazon without a Prime membership. Oh right you can't. Persistent harassment to join "prime" complete with confusing UX tricks. Deliberate plays to artificially delay shipping and enforce minimum orders to artificially manipulate consumer behavior.

    As a customer I refuse to accept or support Amazon's behavior and have taken my business elsewhere.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 )

      Try buying star wars from Amazon without a Prime membership. Oh right you can't.

      So buy it from one of the the 14 different retailers that are selling the movie through Amazon.

    • I actually don't mind the bribes to have delayed shipping. Most of the stuff I order I really don't need soon, so waiting a few extra days for some credit on a future purchase is a good deal to me.

      Though, I am starting to question the value of the Prime membership. Do they still have free shipping on larger orders? I don't really use the movie service and the free music streaming doesn't usually have much I'm interested in, so...

      • My Prime membership runs out later this month, but last I checked, they still had the free shipping on larger orders. It went up from $25 to $35 a few years back, and I think it may have gone up again in the last year ($50?), but I suppose I'll know for sure in a few weeks.

        But yeah, I question the value proposition that Prime actually brings to the table, even for its bread and butter services, which in many cases have gotten worse over the last year or two. For instance, I'm regularly seeing items marked a

        • For the most part, items where two day shipping is not available are things that cannot be shipped by air. Those include liquids above a certain size, any type of aerosol, and large lithium ion batteries. (An example is the 20,000 mAh USB charger pack they offered as a pre-Prime Day deal. But I actually got that in two days anyway even though they only promised five.) There are also some large heavy items where the cost of fast shipping would be prohibitive.

          • That certainly used to be the case, but recently, it's been a whole bevy of items.

            A quick example: we placed an order on July 5th for four items--a video game, a DVD, a pair of flip flops, and some felt pan separators for the kitchen--that were all marked as Prime items that were in stock. The video game and felt pan separators arrived on the 7th, as we expected. The DVD and flip flops didn't even ship until the 7th, which was when we thought they were supposed to be arriving. Neither my wife nor I ever saw

    • Look, you get a 30 day trial to prime and it doesn't disappear when you opt out of the trial. I used to sign up for the free trial on prime, get shit mailed, opt out of prime, then rinse & repeat next time I wanted an item. I did this for 3 years until this last month when I finally ran out of trial days.

      I think you just want to complain, since you get prime free for 30 days.

  • Amazon Strikes:
    1. Paid premium tier that is still garbage in Canada unless you use the service A LOT
    2. Filter bubbles throughout promoting crap I already own (the self-curation feature just makes things worse)
    3. Prices that are not nearly as attractive as they were in years past -- many of my local retails are actually competing on price (reasonably)

    I haven't hit Amazon in months, and though I'll probably hit the site during the holidays, there's just little interest from me in visiting until then...

  • This was the first year I was prime and could take advantage of prime day. I was very disappointed. The few things I wanted sold out in minutes or even seconds. Gift cards, in particular, sell out in less than one second. I think I bought one kitchen thermometer that wasn't really even that cheap, but I needed one and it was reasonable.

    Most of the stuff seemed to be crap that they wanted to get rid of. I browsed several categories, and it was just such random crap that I'd never buy. Why don't they just cal

    • The only "good" deal that remotely appealed too me was the fire tablet for $33... I *almost* bought one... but then the reasoning part of my brain intervened and the impulse evaporated.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by eWarz ( 610883 )
        Different strokes for different folks. I bought boxes of diapers for 40% off. Typically buy the same brand for 15% below Amazon's normal price...but with yesterday's discount i had to order.

  • If the summary is true, wouldn't publishers being paid simply to write about Amazon PrimeDay and/or linking to specific products on Amazon on PrimeDay have to CLEARLY identify their story as 'advertising'? Now, to be clear, I haven't spent any time looking at any "publisher" sites that may have written about Amazon PrimeDay so maybe they are following the rules & clearly identifying their story as 'advertising' but the pessimist in me suggest that this is entirely unlikely and as such I'm betting these

  • Shouldn't today be prime day?

    7 is a Prime number. 13 is a Prime number.

    12? Meh.

    Amazon could have done so much better if they'd had Prime day on prime numbers.

    What next? Pi Day on 3/13 next year?

  • Seriously though, I went over to check it out because of this slashdot story, not those other incentivized ones. Didn't see anything worth buying though, regardless of price. Your average garage sale is more interesting.

  • A lot of the electronics offered on Amazon Prime Day was just rebranded Chinese stuff that you can find at the same or lower prices on DealExtreme, AliExpress or GearBest ALL YEAR LONG.

  • I have a Prime subscription... I looked though literally hundreds upon hundreds of "Prime" deals but found almost nothing that interested me. Nothing that caused me to push the "Buy" button, anyway.

    I did buy something yesterday but it's the kind of thing I was going to buy regardless, the much-hyped Prime thing wasn't a factor.

    "Much ado about nothing" in my opinion.

  • They held it on June 12th. Neither 6 nor 12 are prime numbers!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      Darnit ... I meant July and 7. But too bad, so sad /. has no editing system one you click that submit button.

  • Lol, what coverge? I read reddit daily, as well as facebook, and slashdot, and this is the first article about prime day that I've seen.

  • This is the second Amazon Prime Day, and it's pretty hard to miss.

    No, not hard to miss. I worked all day, went to a bar, went home, cooked, ate, went to bed. Didn't see a thing about Amazon Prime Day.

    Oh, it may have been in adverts on the telly. But that's what the fast-forward button is for. Never watch live TV again - just put it on hold when you're making a cuppa tea, having a piss, or rewind if you didn't quite catch something - you'll accumulate enough time easily to be able to FF through the adverts

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