Amazon Sets Date for Prime Day

Amazon.com's second annual Prime Day sale will launch at midnight PST on July 12. The Seattle-based online retailer created the shopping holiday for its Prime customers last year as something of a half-birthday for Christmas. On 2015, Prime Day customers ordered 34.4 million items worldwide, breaking the retailer's Black Friday records.

Total Retail's Take: Only open to Amazon Prime members, Amazon has positioned Prime Day and its bevy of deals as another incentive for consumers to sign up for the $99/year service. The strategy makes sense, as Prime is a major profit driver for the company. Prime members spend, on average, about $1,100 per year vs. about $600 per year for nonmembers, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Amazon has created its own shopping holiday in a typically slow part of the retail calendar — right before back to school starts to heat up — and in the process acquires high-value customers. A win-win for Amazon; not so great for its competitors (i.e., basically everyone else selling online).