Amazon holds Prime Day in July every year to juice sales numbers during what are typically slow summer months. It also helps Amazon promote an early start to the back-to-school and college shopping period, according to JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth. Amazon\n \n tested out its inaugural Prime Day in July 2015 to celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary. It designed the day to replicate Black Friday for Amazon\n \n die-hards, but boasted more deals than the November shopping tradition.
The vast majority of the company’s offerings on Prime Day in the past have been exclusive to Prime members. This will be the first Prime Day with Amazon’s revamped delivery network. Amazon has traditionally operated one national delivery network that distributed orders from warehouses spread across the country. If a local warehouse didn’t have the product a customer ordered in, say, Detroit, Amazon would ship it from another part of the country.