For Prime Day, Amazon puts its latest shopping tech forward

What you do on the day when everyone’s watching can say a lot about what you value. It can also point to where you’re heading next.

That’s true for Amazon Prime Day, which is a two-day event this year that began on Tuesday and runs through July 13. The annual sales extravaganza is a bonafide ecommerce holiday, as brands and retailers from across the landscape use the occasion to get the attention of a shopping public that is on the lookout for an online bargain.

The focus is first and foremost on all of the deals that are flowing in, and how sales are performing.

With one business day nearly complete on the East Coast, consumer insights firm Numerator offered some early numbers from its 2022 Live Prime Day Tracker. Here are a few insights so far, according to Numerator data updated at 4 p.m. EST on July 12:

• Order size: Average Prime Day order value so far this year was $52.22, while 46% of households placed orders for two or more items.
• Popular items: Items like Fire TV Sticks, Echo Dot 4th Gens and Frito-Lay Variety Packs are the most popular orders on the day at Amazon, per Numerator, while household essentials gained the highest category share with 36% of items purchased.
• Inflation’s impact: The survey results show inflation impacted 83% of shoppers, with 73% of shoppers who shopped both this year and last spending the same amount or less. This comes with the caveat that there’s still time to spend more.