Amazon’s Christmas Was Amazing

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Amazon Black Friday
Hate it or love it, Amazon hit some new mile markers over the holiday season.   It reported that tens of millions of people worldwide started Amazon Prime trials or became paid members.  In the US alone, more than one billion items shipped for free this holiday season with Prime.
Small third party vendors played a large role in Amazon’s sales this season.  More than half of sales on Amazon came from small and medium-sized businesses. “Small and medium-sized businesses had their best holiday season ever in our stores, with items sold growing at a faster rate than retail,” said the company.

In electronics, the best selling items at Amazon for the holiday were Bose QuietComfort Wireless Headphones.  Others included the Samsung Flat 65″ 4K UHD 8 Series Smart LED TV, Apple iPad (Wi-Fi, 32GB) in Space Gray, Wemo Mini Smart Plug, Blue Yeti USB Microphone in Blackout, Wyze Cam 1080p HD Indoor Wireless Smart Home Camera, and HP Sprocket Photo Paper.

Not only Amazon, but retail in general had a stellar season.  Holiday sales grew 5.1 percent this year to more than $850 billion, marking the best  season in six years, said Mastercard. Additionally, online sales jumped 19.1 percent compared to last year, reported USA Today.

The biggest retail gains overall were in the clothing and home improvement sectors. Electronics sales actually fell 0.7 percent.

At Amazon, the Echo Dot, and Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote were among the best-selling items.

As Alexa heads into car radios this year, here are some mile markers to note on the widespread use of the voice service:

  • Alexa set more than one hundred million timers this holiday season.
  • Customers used Alexa to listen to hundreds of millions more hours of music this holiday season compared to last year.
  • This holiday season, customers listened to more than one million holiday stories from Amazon Storytime on Alexa – the most popular holiday story was Rapping Paper.
  • Customers around the world asked Alexa how many days or sleeps until Christmas this holiday season – customers in the United Kingdom were the most excited, asking twice as much as customers in any other country.
  • Customers used Alexa nearly twice as much on Fire TV devices this holiday season compared to the same time period last year.

Source: Amazon

Photo: Consumer Affairs

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3 Comments

  1. OH Amy…. don’t you realize who your readers are??? We ARE the small brick and mortar stores – that are struggling all year long just to have “The Holiday Season” arrive and then have to work 50-60 hour weeks just to bail out our year. We are exhausted and frustrated – and this is what you give us??? I hope maybe you do have the VP’s of Amazon reading – because this story will have offended a LOT of your original, loyal, 12 volt subscriber base.

    1. Like it or hate it (I hate it), but it is news and I think we need to be aware. I an a retailer and a installer and don’t really get up in the morning to pack boxes and fill a UPS truck. I’m not sure what the answer is. I hope that some people will continue to see value in local service with the sale, but the more I talk with family members and friends the more skeptical I become. My sister was telling me how she ordered 5 pairs of shoes on line, chose the pair she wanted and sent the rest back, all to avoid having to set foot (pun intended) in an actual store.
      For every vendor we deal with that tries to put the brakes on their product being on line, two others go into that fray and also sell on their own website.

  2. Yaaaaaaaaa, So glad to hear that this guy will make almost a trillion dollars in a christmas season, and put more small brick and mortar company to rest. all to sell everybody stuff way to cheap. The Manufactures I guess they don’t care that Amazon cheapens there name and product. I could go on for days!

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