How Amazon Turned Prime Day Into A Dizzying Shopping Extravaganza

If you’ve been lured into trying a 30-day free Amazon Prime trial, good luck with cancelling it this week. Instead, you’ll be offered to extend it for another 30 days – again, for free. The reason: Amazon is gearing up for its biggest annual sales event, Prime Day, which starts on July 16 at 12:00 BST. This year’s extravaganza lasts 36 hours – six hours longer than ever before. For Amazon, Prime Day is a powerful marketing tool. There are now more than 100 million Prime members, with some 16 per cent of them signed up for the sole purpose of getting access to Prime Day promotions. A whopping 32 per cent of all subscribers, meanwhile, did indeed click on the buy button on last year’s Prime Day, according to a survey by retail consultancy Global Data. Last year, Amazon’s Prime Day turnover soared 50 per cent on the previous year, and it was also the company’s biggest ever day for signing up new members. Read more at Wired.