What's everyone seeing across Prime Big Deal Days? I had fun this morning turnin
By Johntimothyshea · October 8, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
What's everyone seeing across Prime Big Deal Days?
I had fun this morning turning my ecommerce-nerdery into 10 min of fame by joining Diane King Hall on Schwab to discuss what we at PMG are seeing.
Key trends from us:
1. It's the opening bell for holiday shopping. Amazon's sales this week have historically run about 50% above a normal week, and now Walmart, Target and other retailers run their own sales alongside it.
2. However, despite Amazon's billing of the event as a catalyst for holiday shopping, the mix continues to shift more and more toward essentials. Discretionary categories were about 55% of Amazon's US sales through September, down from 57% two years ago and essential categories saw the biggest growth during the summer prime day event. We expect more people to use this week stock up on things like cleaning supplies, pantry staples etc...
3. Shoppers are increasingly trading up on the splurge and trading down on the staples. The average price of the 1,000 most purchased electronics products rose about 23% YoY in the second quarter. Meanwhile the same figure for pet supplies fell about 7%. For brands, that means trading down isn't happening across the board. One playbook won't work for everyone this holiday season.
4. With AI, everyone is a professional deal researcher. If brands want deals to work they need to execute them with the expectation that consumers are just one short click away from a full price history for any item!
Thanks to the Schwab Network team for having me on, and to the PMG commerce team for the data and expertise. Stay tuned for our post-event recap....
As an aside, a great AI use case: you can now stumble through TV interview prep with an AI companion so you don't have to embarrass yourself in front of your bad ass marketing team (sorry Andrew Waber and Ruben Sanchez, I saved all my hilariously bad rehearsals for AI ;-)
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