The Dystopian World Of Amazon Prime Day

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Amazon was a scrappy young company in Silicon Valley. Then Jeff Bezos implemented the Amazon Prime program, and it launched the once-small online book store into the stratosphere. Is Amazon Prime good or bad for the economy? Is Prime Day bigger than Black Friday? This interview previously aired on Peacock on July 9th, 2021. Emma Vigeland discusses Amazon Prime Day with Ellen Cushing.

Peacock clip

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Emma Vigeland: I will admit that I do use Amazon still because it is so ubiquitous. Because I used to shop at Whole Foods and then they purchased Whole Foods. and it's just kind of this habit but I'm trying to do it less. Prime day, June 22nd, explain to the audience what this thing is that Amazon has created.

Ellen Cushing: So Prime day was founded in 2015. Founded? Friday was invented in 2015 in honor of Amazon's 20th anniversary. And it's a sales holiday which you know it's in some senses it's not all that different from like a free Slurpee day. But it was invented for Prime members to get really big discounts they wanted to rival black Friday. They explicitly wanted to rival Black Friday with all the deals that you could possibly get on all of the things that Amazon sells, which is everything. and so you know you can get a tv for 50% off or whatever. And it has grown originally it was a small number of deals on a single day now it's a two-day extravaganza. And there's an entire ecosystem devoted to sussing out what the best deals are and where you can find the tv for 50 off. and it is a legitimate holiday. It is like hundreds of millions of people take part in it. I believe based on some numbers that I crunch, that more Americans buy things on Amazon Prime day than buy turkeys on Thanksgiving. It's a huge thing. And it is all intended to sort of feed this beast that is Amazon Prime which is a huge huge huge force in our economy. In the way people shop. It has 200 million members worldwide. 150-ish in the US which is more than there are households in the U.S. and Prime day is intended to reward Prime members and keep them loyal but also to drawing new people because if you're getting electronic for $200 off and the Prime membership is only $120 there you go it's worth it on the spot.

Emma Vigeland: Right so I mean I wanted to back up a little bit. Thank you for that expansive explanation. About why this day was created. And when it was created right so it was in Prime in and of itself was introduced in 2005 as a fairly narrow service. How did it become what it is today? and how did Prime day which I think was created 10 years after the service of Prime was created? How did it become this all-encompassing thing where, I mean, you write it's the second biggest subscription service in the world after Netflix? And you know that's incredibly successful especially because Netflix is like a passive consumption vehicle right you can just turn it on your smart tv and you can listen as opposed to Amazon which has its hands in groceries or TVs or books or whatever? I mean it's completely ubiquitous.

Ellen Cushing: Yeah, so Prime day was originally founded at a time when founded Prime day came into existence at a moment when Amazon was a much smaller company. It's kind of hard to believe it now but Amazon was probably still you know at the time that Prime day was invented or sorry at the time that Prime was invented Amazon was a very big retailer. But everyone's good money in silicon valley was on eBay. It was sort of struggling to fight against eBay which everyone thought eBay was valued like probably twice as much as Amazon at the time. And everyone thought that eBay was going to win out and Amazon was scrappy and their whole thing was always innovating on behalf of the customer. And so if you think about it that way Prime makes a lot of sense. You know, it eliminates on Amazon's side the calculate like having to calculate shipping costs for people. It encourages people to buy more things. Because you're kind of trying to make back the money that you spent on the membership. So you know when Amazon first introduced Prime it was I think 79 bucks for a year.