
Blog with Rob: Christmas in July?
By now you’ve heard about (or scored a deal from) Amazon’s new Prime Day sale. The July 15th sale was launched in celebration of the mega online retailer’s 20th anniversary. The sale is available to the company’s Prime members only, a program that gives subscribers benefits like free 2 day shipping in exchange for an annual fee of $99 or $49 for students. Of course, if you hadn’t yet tried the service, you could have signed up for a standard 30-day free trial just to take advantage of the “Black Friday” style deals.
And while the sale itself is news-worthy, what is even more interesting is the scramble it caused with arch-rival Wal-Mart, whose brick-and-mortar model has often suffered in the face of Amazon’s online success. In response to Amazon’s early July announcement, Wal-Mart countered with its own set of “online-only rollbacks” to be launched on the same day as the online retailer’s mega-sale.
But that was just the beginning as a public set of jabs was traded between the companies with Wal-Mart announcing their new sale by saying:
“We’ve heard some retailers are charging $100 to get access to a sale. But the idea of asking customers to pay extra in order to save money just doesn’t add up for us. We’re standing up for our customers and everyone else who sees no rhyme or reason for paying a premium to save.”
Amazon wasn’t about to take the slight lying down, responding with a statement that noted:
“We’ve heard some retailers are charging higher prices for items in their physical stores than they do for the same items online. The idea of charging your in-store customers more than your online customers doesn’t add up for us, but it’s a good reminder that you’re usually better off shopping online.”
So as the battle for sales continues between these two giants, the only question left is, which one has the better price on a discount bucket of Aloe Vera for all these burns?
- On July 16, 2015