Amazon Drives Home Small Business Benefits

(June 23, 2021) - As it faces continued antitrust scrutiny, Amazon has said this week’s Prime Day delivered “the two biggest days” ever for SMBs on its stores worldwide.

In addition, the e-tailer said that, in the two-week lead-up to Prime Day, customers spent $1.9 billion on more than 70 million small business products during the ‘Spend $10, Get $10’ promotion period, more than a 100% year-over-year increase compared with Prime Day in October 2020.

Highlighting how it benefits SMBs has been a central theme of Amazon’s PR and communications over the past couple of years as authorities question its dual role as a marketplace platform provider and a seller in its own right. Last month, the District of Columbia filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of “illegal control of prices” on its online marketplace.

Amazon had also touted Prime Day this year as a way to save on back-to-school (BTS) items. It said that on 21 and 22 June, Prime Members bought more than 600,000 backpacks, one million laptops, one million headphones, 240,000 computer notebooks, 40,000 calculators, and 220,000 Crayola products – calling out the Hallmark-owned brand specifically. - (OPI)