Prime Day was projected to break records again this year, surpassing even the “tens of millions” of Prime members who shopped the discounts last year. Wall Street expected higher sales and a higher share price for Amazon as a result.
Amazon’s e-commerce sales in the U.S. are meanwhile expected to reach a staggering $258.2 billion this year, up nearly 30 percent from a year ago, according to a new survey from eMarketer that looks at the company’s sales by product category.
That means Amazon is expected to capture nearly half of the U.S. e-commerce market by the end of 2018, eMarketer said. The company ended 2017 with about 44 percent of the market.
On Prime Day by itself, industry analysts had estimated the company could ring up as least $3.4 billion within a 36-hour window. This is the first Prime Day that Amazon owns grocer Whole Foods, which has its own deals running through the week.
With the glitches, however, it’s possible Amazon isn’t able to achieve those sales targets. Frustrated shoppers could begin to turn to rival retailers offering similar deals online this week.
“The outage is especially problematic as many of Amazon’s Prime deals are promoted for a set window of time — something that could cause a great deal of frustration for potential customers,” GlobalData Retail Managing Director Neil Saunders said.
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