Unveiling the Retail Showdown: Best Buy vs. Amazon PRIME Day

The retail calendars are already littered with offers to lure shoppers who have heeded the siren call of two champions: Amazon’s glittery October PRIME Day and Best Buy’s ‘Big Delivery Event’ fall sales bonanza. As leaves change and temperatures drop, the temperature rises as these huge retailers vie for consumer attention.

PRIME Time Deals: Amazon's October Bonanza

For the past three years, when Amazon announces its ‘PRIME Day’, everyday objects in just about every category are on sale for ‘one day only’. When the company announced this year’s PRIME Day, which would take place in October, there was a palpable internal buzz at many a bricks-and-mortar retailer. ‘Great!’ they must have thought, ‘Let the discount shopping season begin.’ PRIME Day is the leak in the structure of the shopping year. PRIME Day is the signal that the holidays have arrived.

Best Buy's Strategic Counter: A Fall Savings Schedule

Then Best Buy, not to be outdone, announces its own fall savings ‘agenda’ days in advance of Amazon’s announcement of PRIME Day. Best Buy’s plan will run from 27 September through 25 October, with multiple ‘Black Friday-level’ sale ‘events’ designed to keep shoppers engaged both before and after PRIME Day, further underscoring its intention to be a legitimate contender in the holiday shopping season kickoff.

Member Exclusives and Apple Trade-Up Highlights

A clever aspect of Best Buy’s plan is its sales tied exclusively to Best Buy Plus and My Best Total members, members-only versions of previous programs that seem to riff on Amazon’s PRIME benefits, but for less than the annual cost of PRIME. A savings on iPods for eighth-graders which, paired with Best Buy’s collection of old devices for trade-up seems designed to feed the tech hound’s gadget lust.

The Flash Sale Face-Off

The most direct threat to PRIME Day may be Best Buy’s own 48-hour Flash Sale, which will begin simultaneously with Amazon’s event dates. Non-members can participate as well as those who already have the retailer’s reward-points Visa card. In a statement, Best Buy promises to ‘continue to deliver value and access’ to shoppers, suggesting that privatised services may be the best way to compete with Amazon.

Gearing Up for the Gaming Gala

But as October comes to a close... Best Buy has a three-day event that is geared towards gamers – a sector that jibes with the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launch that day. That narrow focus not only caters to the gamers but further supports Best Buy’s mission to stay the course in the weeks leading into the traditional holiday season.

A Look Ahead: The Retail Rivalry Intensifies

As we edge into early Black Friday at the end of October with Best Buy, we see the company staking out sales around PRIME Day with very specific timing. Member exclusives on the day can fight with Amazon’s own member exclusives. Tech trade-ups and gaming could take away from Amazon’s PRIME deals. Everyone fears losing mindshare to Amazon’s PRIME-centric hold.

Reflecting on PRIME and Its Place in Retail

Amazon PRIME Day’s move into late October and Best Buy’s fall savings events trace a growing reality in retail: prime time is whatever time a retailer announces it to be. As events and sales edge into one another, trying to leap frog over one another, consumers are the real winners, as the competition heats up to draw their dollars.

Understanding PRIME

By ‘prime’, I mean in particular Amazon PRIME, a subscription service whose members receive a number of benefits – including free shipping, member-only sales (eg, PRIME Day), and access to Amazon’s enormous content-streaming library. But PRIME Day – a sales event limited to Amazon PRIME members, and featuring online deals in a near-infinite range of product categories – has become a retail shopping holiday like no other. Best Buy used it as a catalyst to adjust retail clocktimes. Other retailers have been running competitive sales events around the same time. The notion of ‘prime time’ for shopping is extending, and retailers are rewriting how and when they operate. More broadly, ‘prime’ is a useful way of talking about the best moment of the retail calendar, the best time for discount deals and for profit. PRIME time is when retailers want you to pay attention and spend your money.