Two Data Firms Watched Prime Day. They Saw Two Different Shoppers

Adobe reports that the four days of Amazon’s Prime Day event, June 23 through 26, drove a record $26.4 billion in U.S. online spending across retailers, up 9.3% from last year. Numerator’s tracker, built on tens of thousands of observed Prime Day orders, tells a different story: the average household shopping Amazon’s event spent $143.45, down about 8% from $156.37 in 2025, and the average order fell roughly 11% to $47.66. Numerator notes its tracker figures are an early read and subject to change, with its final update posted the afternoon the event ended. Both things can be true at once. The window set a record while the baskets inside Amazon’s event got smaller.

Amazon disputes the panel readings. In a statement to Supermarket News, the company said estimates from third-party consultancies without access to its data are inaccurate, and that it was “pleased with the positive customer response,” noting that more than 80% of its deals hit their lowest price of the year and hundreds of thousands of items were discounted 40% or more. Amazon does not publish event-specific sales figures, which is why panel estimates are the visibility the industry has. Readers should weigh the company’s objection alongside the data.

Adobe Saw Trading Up. Numerator Saw Trading Down

Here is where the event gets genuinely interesting. Adobe’s data, shared with Retail Dive, found consumers using the sales period to buy more expensive products: the share of the most expensive goods grew 19% compared to average levels this year, the premium share within electronics jumped 51%, and shoppers traded up in toys, appliances, and furniture. Numerator’s observed Amazon orders point the opposite direction: 69% of items sold for under $20, just 3% topped $100, and the average item cost $23.23.

The two firms are not contradicting each other. They are measuring different things. Adobe tracks all U.S. online retail spending during the four-day window. Numerator observes Amazon Prime Day orders specifically. Read together, the datasets suggest that the stock-up behavior concentrated inside Amazon’s event while the premium dollar moved through the broader window, across the many retailers running sales at the same time. Telsey Advisory Group found that roughly 40% of the 68 retailers and brands it tracks were more promotional around this event than in July of last year. The whole industry leaned into Amazon’s window. One reading suppliers should weigh, and it is an editorial inference rather than a reported finding: the big-ticket purchase did not vanish from the deal event. It may simply have stopped defaulting to Amazon.

Inside Amazon’s Event, Staples Beat Splurges

What Numerator observed inside the event is unambiguous. The top three items across all four days were Premier Protein shakes, Liquid I.V. packets, and Temptations cat treats. The most-purchased categories were apparel and shoes, household essentials, and health and wellness. Only 14% of shoppers reported buying consumer electronics, down five percentage points from 2025 at an event once defined by television and device deals. Numerator analyst Amanda Schoenbauer noted that this year’s shoppers avoided the big-ticket buys that once defined the event and put their budgets toward everyday essentials instead, a shift she tied to the inflationary backdrop.

Sentiment softened along with the baskets, and notably, it softened without discounts getting worse. Adobe found deal depths essentially flat year over year, with electronics discounts peaking at 24% versus 23% last year and apparel holding at 24%. Yet 60% of surveyed shoppers said they were extremely or very satisfied with this year’s deals, down from 67% last year. Buy now, pay later orders grew 9.5% and accounted for $2.1 billion in spending, 6.6% of online orders during the period, per Adobe. Same discounts, lower satisfaction, more financing. That is a portrait of a stretched shopper grading harder, not a portrait of a weaker deal sheet. Grocery participation also fell: 16% of Prime Day shoppers bought grocery items, down from 22% in 2025, per Numerator. And Numerator’s typical observed Prime Day shopper was a high-income suburban woman between the ages of 45 and 64, which sharpens the picture further: the grading-harder behavior is showing up in households with money.

Walmart Was The Default Second Tab

The finding that matters most for this audience: 52% of Prime Day shoppers compared prices across retailers before buying, and among them, Walmart was the most-checked retailer at 67%, ahead of Target at 41% and club retailers at 28%. That comparison shopping happened while Walmart’s own Deals event ran June 22 through 28, wrapping the entire Prime Day window. Put the dispersal thesis and the comparison data side by side and the picture sharpens: if the premium dollar left Amazon’s baskets during a record-setting window, the most-checked alternative was Walmart.

The implications split by segment. For 3P sellers who cross-list on Amazon, none of this is abstract; the essentials shift and the sub-$20 gravity showed up in their own event results, and CPG staples topping the sell-through list rewrites the assumption that tentpole events belong to electronics. For 1P suppliers, the read is the shopper’s posture heading into second-half planning: a customer who waits for deal windows, holds a price ceiling near $20 per item at stock-up moments, finances more of what she buys, cross-checks Walmart by default, and grades deals harder even when the discounts have not changed. That shopper is walking into every line review, holiday pack-size decision, and opening-price-point conversation between now and January.

The half of this story that is not yet visible is Walmart’s own. Walmart does not release event-specific results, and the third-party card-spend and traffic data that isolates Walmart Deals performance historically lands about two weeks after the event. When it arrives, the question this data raises, whether the spending and the trade-up dollars that left Amazon’s baskets showed up in Walmart’s, becomes answerable. That is the number worth watching for.

Winning With Walmart

Winning With Walmart is an independent platform for suppliers, sellers, solution providers, and industry experts.

Articles are developed by staff editors, contributing experts, and trusted partners.

Some are researched and drafted with the assistance of AI tools and are reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by Winning With Walmart editors before publication.

Editorial judgment, sourcing decisions, and final approval rest with the publication's human editors in every case.

We are committed to accuracy and fairness. If you believe this article contains an error, we welcome your feedback.