With Amazon’s third Prime Day kicking off tomorrow, Prime consumers can look forward to another day of Black Friday-esque deals. Last year, Prime Day 2016 was Amazon’s biggest sales day ever, surpassing Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Prime Day 2015. In fact, Prime Day 2016 produced 60 percent more orders worldwide and 50 percent more orders in the U.S. compared to Prime Day 2015.
Prime Day 2016 sold more than than two million toys, one million pairs of shoes, approximately 90,000 TVs, and hundreds of thousands of Kindles.This year has also been a big year for Amazon on the consumer AI front, coming out of a strong 2016 holiday season for the Echo combined with the very recent release of the Echo Look and the beta release of the Echo Show. Surely all eyes will be on how much Amazon sells on this year’s Prime Day compared to those of the previous two years, but three other key results to watch from Prime Day 2017 are vital to Amazon’s AI ambitions.
The Echo Show
Last year’s Prime Day was the biggest sales day ever for the Echo, with sales up 2.5x compared to the day prior. Prime Day 2016 built momentum for Echo sales going into the 2016 holiday season; it was a harbinger for what was to come a few months later.
Amazon officially released the Echo Show to the public on June 28. Retailing at $229.99, the Echo Show is Amazon’s most expensive home assistant yet compared to the $179.99 Echo and the $49.99 Echo Dot. With a 7-inch touchscreen, the Echo Show provides new capabilities such as watching videos on YouTube, video calling another Echo Show, and acting as a photo album display.
However, there are mixed reviews about the Echo Show, with some experts saying that the Echo Show isn’t revolutionary enough to warrant upgrading from the original Echo.Prime Day will be telling for the Echo Show, which was publicly released less than two weeks before Prime Day. Because Amazon will inevitably push it with a large discount, it will not only be interesting to see how well the new and more expensive Echo Show sells but also interesting to see how many existing Echo owners upgrade to the Echo Show. A recent consumer survey shows that 87 percent of current Echo owners plan to upgrade to the Echo Show for reasons such as wanting to have the latest technology and wanting to have the 7-inch screen. On the other hand, 22 percent of people who don’t already…
The post Examining AI’s role in Amazon’s Prime Day appeared first on FeedBox.