More retailers offered Prime Day sales this year compared to last year, but ecommerce companies weren’t as keen to direct competition with Amazon.com Inc.’s bespoke shopping holiday. Among a panel of 100 online retailers from Digital Commerce 360’s Top 1000 Database, more retailers offered Father’s Day promotions in early June than offered site-wide sales to compete with Amazon’s Prime Day on Tuesday.

Amazon, which is the top retailer in the Top 1000, started its member-only summer shopping holiday back in 2015, and many retailers over the years have joined the ecommerce bonanza by offering their own sales — with many returning again this year. However, two of Amazon’s largest competitors, Walmart Inc. (No. 2) and Target Corp. (No. 5), both held more subdued sales this year.

The Top 1000 ranks North America’s largest online retailers by their annual web sales.

Prime Day competition from Walmart and Target

Last year, Walmart and Target held big, branded sales during the Prime Day sales week, offering members of its loyalty programs discounts on a wide variety of items.

This year, Walmart held a Walmart+ Week in mid-June, and Target’s Circle Week sale took place the week before Prime Day. Both retailers still offered deals on their homepages on Tuesday, the first of the Prime Day sales event, but neither branded their promotions in ways that overtly compete with Amazon.

Still, 77% of the retailers in the Digital Commerce 360 panel ran promotions on Tuesday. That’s up from 69% in early June and even above the 75% running on last year’s first day of the Prime Day sales event — also a Tuesday. However, retailers offered smaller homepage discounts, down to a minimum of 6% compared to a 10% minimum discount during the control period. The median smallest discount on the homepage also shrank, down to 20% from 25% during the control.

Of those running promotions, more offered percentage-off discounts during the first day of the Prime Day sales event compared to the control period — 85.5% of retailers offering promotions discounted by percentages compared to 72.7% during the control. Free shipping, a hallmark of Amazon’s Prime membership, was also touted a lot on Prime Day, with 15.8% of retailers offering promotions mentioning it as part of a sale compared to just 4.5% the month before.

Prime time promotions

Of retailers running promotions in Digital Commerce 360’s panel, 22.1% offered large site-wide promotions to compete with Amazon. Last year, 29.3% of the same panel offered competing promotions. For example, Target was running a simple “2-day deals” promotion, a slight nod to Amazon’s big sale, but with much less fanfare. Similarly, Walmart pushed its membership program, but deals on its front page were much the same as they were during the control period.

Still, other retailers did aim to take on Amazon. The Gap Inc. (No. 20) returned to its Gap Day promotion, which it didn’t run during last year’s Prime Day event, with a blanket 50% off promotion. Designer Brands (No. 72) used its DSW.com to poke fun at Amazon, noting that it was a “Prime time to become a VIP member” to get a 20% discount.

During the first day of the Prime Day event, the Prime-adjacent sales were the most popular framing, but many more retailers were pushing Father’s Day sales during the control period. This holds steady from last year, when many more retailers published 4th of July deals than competed with Prime Day.

Last year’s control period was after Father’s Day and before the 4th. This year’s was before both.

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