Amazon’s Prime Day is now 4 days as retailers weigh whether to pass tariff costs on to consumers

·AmazonAmazon’s Prime Day is now 4 days as retailers weigh whether to pass tariff costs on to consumersBY Anne D'InnocenzioBY The Associated PressBY Anne D'InnocenzioBY The Associated PressA worker prepares orders at the Amazon

Fulfillment centre Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesAmazon is extending its annual Prime Day sales and offering new membership perks to Gen Z shoppers amid tariff-related price worries and possibly some consumer boredom with an event marking its 11th year

The e-commerce giant’s mised blitz of summer deals for Prime members starts at 3:01 a

Eastern time on Tuesday

Before wrapping up Prime Day 2025 early Friday, Amazon said it would have deals dropping as often as every 5 minutes during certain periods

Amazon executives declined to on the potential impact of tariffs on Prime Day deals

The event is taking place two and a half months after an online news report sparked speculation that Amazon planned to display added tariff costs next to duct prices on its website

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced the purported change as a “hostile and political act” before Amazon clarified the idea had been floated for its low-cost Haul storefront but never apved

Amazon’s past success with using Prime Day to drive sales and attract new members spurred other major retail chains to schedule competing sales in July

Best Buy, Target and Walmart are repeating the practice this year

Amazon, Walmart is adding two more days to its motional period, which starts Tuesday and runs through July 13

The nation’s largest retailer is making its summer deals available in stores as well as online for the first time

Here’s what to expect: More days might not mean more spending Amazon expanded Prime Day this year because shoppers “wanted more time to shop and,” Amazon Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani recently told The Associated Press

Analysts are unsure the extra days will translate into more purchases given that renewed inflation worries and potential price increases from tariffs may make consumers less willing to spend

Amazon doesn’t disclose Prime Day sales figures but said last year that the event achieved record global sales

Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, noted that Amazon’s move to stretch the sales event to four days is a big opportunity to “really amplify and accelerate the spending velocity. ” Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy at software company Salesforce, noted that July sales in general have lost some momentum in recent years

Amazon is not a Salesforce customer, so the software company is not privy to Prime Day figures. “What we saw last year was that (shoppers) bought and then they were done, ” Schwartz said. “We know that the consumer is still really cautious

So it’s ly we could see a similar pattern where they come out early, they’re ready to buy and then they take a step back. ” Tariffs don’t seem to be impacting costs much (so far) Amazon executives reported in May that the company and many of its third-party sellers tried to beat big import tax bills by stocking up on foreign goods before President Donald Trump’s tariffs took effect

And because of that move, a fair number of third-party sellers hadn’t changed their pricing at that time, Amazon said

Adobe Digital Insights’ Pandya expects discounts to remain on par with last year and for other U

Salesforce’s Schwartz said she’s noticed retailers becoming more precise with their discounts, such as offering motion codes that apply to selected ducts instead of their entire websites

Shoppers might focus on necessities Amazon Prime and other July sales have historically helped jump-start back-to-school spending and encouraged advance planners to buy other seasonal merchandise earlier

Analysts said they expected U

Consumers to make purchases this week out of fear that tariffs will make items more expensive later

Brett Rose, CEO of United National Consumer Supplies, a wholesale distributor of overstocked goods toys and beauty ducts, thinks shoppers will go for items beauty essentials. “They’re going to buy more everyday items,” he said

A look at the discounts As in past years, Amazon offered early deals leading up to Prime Day

For the big event, Amazon said it would have special discounts on Alexa-enabled ducts Echo, Fire TV and Fire tablets

Walmart said its July sale would include a 32-inch Samsung smart monitor priced at $199 instead of $299. 99; and $50 off a 50-Inch Vizio Smart TV with a standard retail price of $298

Target said it was maintaining its 2024 prices on key back-to-school items, including a $5 backpack and a selection of 20 school supplies totaling less than $20

Some third-party sellers are expected to sit out Prime Day and not offer discounts to preserve their fit margins during the tariff uncertainty, analysts said

Rose, of United National Consumer Supplies, said he spoke with third-party sellers who said they would rather take a sales hit this week than use up a lot of their pre-tariffs inventory now and risk seeing their fit margins suffer later

However, some independent es that market their ducts on Amazon are looking to Prime Day to make a dent in the inventory they built up earlier in the year to avoid tariffs

Fragrance company Outdoor Fellow, which makes 30% of its sales through Amazon’s marketplace, gets most of its candle lids, labels, jars, reed diffusers and other items from China, founder Patrick Jones said

Fearing high costs from tariffs, Jones stocked up at the beginning of the year, roughly doubling his inventory

For Prime Day, he plans to offer bigger discounts, such as 32% off the price of a candle normally priced at $34, Jones said. “All the duct that we have on Amazon right now is still from the inventory that we got before the tariffs went into effect,” he said. “So we’re still able to offer the discount that we’re planning on doing. ” Jones said he was waiting to find out if the order he placed in June will incur large customs duties when the goods arrive from China in a few weeks

Explore this year's list.