1. Prime Day Continues to Break Records

If past Prime Days were just promotional events, then in 2026, it is more like a concentrated outbreak of the annual consumer sentiment.

According to predictions, this year's U.S. Prime Day online sales are expected to reach $26.3 billion, a 9% increase from last year, setting a new record. This figure even surpasses the combined total of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2025 (approximately $26.05 billion).

The change in Prime Day didn't happen overnight. The consumption structure in the U.S. has been adjusting over the past few years: rising interest rates and increasing living costs have made "waiting for discounts before buying" gradually become mainstream behavior. In May this year, the U.S. inflation rate climbed to 4.2%, a three-year high, which further pushed the "urgent need for hoarding" to the forefront.

However, the sales figures are impressive, but shopping carts tell the truth. What's really worth watching during this year's Prime Day is not the sales amount, but what consumers have in their shopping carts.

The answer is: daily necessities. Prime Day has shifted from a "impulse buying festival" for large appliances and electronics to a time when Americans stock up on essential living items. Surveys show that 43% of American households—over 130 million consumers—plan to shop during Prime Day, with about 25% of them aiming to stock up on daily necessities. As New York Magazine puts it, this year people are buying "the unsexy stuff"—toilet paper, toothpaste, cleaning supplies. No fancy big items, just the essentials for daily life.

In the end, although the total of $26.3 billion has indeed set a new record, what really supports this number is the daily necessities packed into shopping carts by ordinary families with various discounts. $26.3 billion is not a victory of consumption upgrade, but a victory of careful calculation.

2. New Trends in Promotions

This year's promotions, besides the shift in consumer categories, the shopping method itself is also changing. Among them, there are three trends worth noting.

On one hand, AI shopping assistants are fully involved in consumers' decision-making process.

Take Amazon's Alexa for Shopping, which was promoted this year as an example. Users can trigger personalized recommendations, price history tracking, price drop reminders, and automatic ordering at target prices just by asking a question in the dialogue box.

The lower the operation threshold, the higher the usage, Adobe predicts that the access traffic of AI tools during Prime Day will double compared to June last year. For sellers, where the traffic is, there is business. As AI recommendations gradually become a new traffic entrance, the logic of keyword optimization may need to change accordingly.

On the other hand, buy now, pay later (BNPL) is also continuing to heat up. During Prime Day, the BNPL payment scale will reach $2.04 billion, accounting for 7.8% of the total e-commerce consumption during the event. The reason behind this is not difficult to understand. Inflation has lowered consumers' single purchase power, and installment payments have become a way to share the pressure. Essentially, this is using the method of extending the payment period to exchange for current purchasing space.

Another obvious change is the payment channel itself. Mobile has replaced desktop as the absolute main force, expected to contribute 54.2% of online sales, amounting to $14.2 billion. Consumers are moving from computers to mobile phones to complete the shopping process, which puts higher requirements on sellers' page loading speed and payment experience.

Combined, these three trends point to the same judgment: the competition of Prime Day is no longer just on the price level, changes in AI tools, payment methods, and shopping terminals are redefining the boundaries of efficiency and conversion.

All in all, Prime Day is no longer a game of who is cheaper. When inflation makes consumers more rational, AI makes decision-making more efficient, and installment makes payment more flexible, the winner of future promotions will not be the one with the biggest discount, but the one that best understands how consumers buy.

Seller's Home Review

The $26.3 billion sales volume of North American Prime Day in 2026 confirms that consumer demand is concentrated on super nodes. Sellers should plan inventory and advertising budgets in advance, focus on high-conversion categories, and use promotional data to feed back daily operations to seize the opportunity of annual traffic.

Source: E-commerce Dispatch
Original link: https://www.pai.com.cn/p/01kvwhrt9papfy54sfb8wmaanq