Global business news twenty four hours a day. It's Bloomberg dot Com, the radio plus mobile LAFT and on your radio. This is a Bloomberg business flag from Bloomberg World Handquarters. I'm Charlie Pellock down Jones. Industrial average joined the SMP five hundred index at our record closed today, equities advancing for a third day, crude rallied, and ALCO's results bolsted optimism about corporate health amid the start of the earning seasonal cohen out a two month high, up today by
five point four percent to ten sixty nine. SMP five hundred index up fourteen one fifty two, up seven tenths up one percent down, Industrials up one hundred twenty points to eighteen thousand, three hundred forty seven. That was a gain of seven tenths of one percent, and has stack up thirty four, also a gain of seven tenths up
one percent. The tenure down twenty two thirty seconds, the yield one point five percent, gold down twenty two twenty, the ounce thirteen thirty four, a drop there of one point six percent, and crude oil up two oh three of barrel seventy nine for West Texas Enemedia crew. That's a gain of four point six percent. I'm Charlie Pellett and that's a Bloomberg business flash. You're listening to taking Stock with Kathleen on Bluebird Radio. One hundred thousand deals,
ten countries. Yes, Amazon Prime at Sale begins today. The company is hoping to best their performance of last year, in which they sold four hundred million dollars worth of merchandise. Here to tell us more about Amazon and Prime Day is Punamgyal, expert and analyst for retail for Bloomberg Intelligence, put on tell us about this day. How important is
it for Amazon? It's actually very important because it's their way to get more Prime members to join, and once they joined, it probably become a Prime member for life. So it's to repeat purchase that they're really targeting more than just the sale, So they're looking for more people to sign up to be Prime customers. That makes sense. But in terms of the sales, I noted, for example, that consumer electronics seems to dominate Prime Day spotlight deals.
Is that accurate um? That's typically accurate because that is what dominates Amazon deals even on Black Friday or the holiday season. So that is true. But in terms of the deal so far, the items that we've been pricing, it's really ranged from a discount of about thirty on average. And this is just across you know, like thirty to fifty items that we've randomly selected. There are discounts as highest seventy percent, fifty percent. Especially video games there's a
big discount there. Um, big screen TVs we see a discount. But you know, we're seeing a lot of price matching. Um, it's interesting when you look at Amazon versus Walmart. Walmart has knew this year a section called Dare to Compare which prices is um the item across Amazon target best buy to themselves up front for you, and it matches that almost every thirty minutes or so. Well, point, I understand that Walmart is offering free shipping on all items
along with what they call rollback deals. They've been offering a free thirty day trial for their shipping Pass as well. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. You know, Um, Amazon has been taking share of e commerce and Walmart needs to step up their game. So this is their first attempt this year with Shipping Pass, which is a program similar to Prime at half the price. It aims to also ship product in two days or less for forty nine dollars a year. They're giving it for free, as you said, for dirty
days and this week only they have free shipping on everything. Well, I want to bring in a Suprea Chowdery, the chief marketing officer of Clavis Insight, joining us from Boston home to Bloomberg and wondering if maybe you can give us a little insight, Supria, on some of the specific deals and whether they are really any better than the deals
that are offered by Amazon on a regular basis. Sure, um, in terms of actual promotional discounts, they probably average similar to the deals that you see UM from Amazon on daily basis. What is really big here is the fact that the number of deals UM that Amazon is offering during this period is much larger much so. For example, what would be a larger component, I mean, is it luxury, It's a It's a larger number of of deals at
any given time. And in terms of the types of deals that they are spotlighting, the spotlight deals today were really focused a lot on consumer electronics, so they had flagship flagship deals on Samsung Um Curve TVs and the iBOT Your Room Barber two featured deals that were really hot and sold out by by lunchtime. But it is very focused on the electronics and laptops and also Amazon's
own fire TVs and and tablets and other things. I wanted to ask you about that, for example, the Amazon devices that you just mentioned plus the Alexa, the voice activated device from Amazon. Is that also part of the strategy to get people to just be hooked into the Amazon ecosystem. I would think it is. Um, they have a very big percentage of the deals on their own products. Uh, and you know products those products definitely hook you right
back into the Amazon Amazon ecosystem. So uh, you know, you can sort of see the deepening of of of the Prime memberships, expansion of Prime and trying to convert people that are not on Prime onto Prime. Um with this with this Prime Day, Prime Day promotion, this this big shopping holiday that they're creating, and then you know, getting more and more people into Amazon products that tie
you to that ecosystem. As as mentioned, there are other retailers that are a sense piggybacking off of this Prime Day as sale. Is that something that will just continue and give us some examples of the companies that are looking to capitalize on this. Sure Walmart first comes to mind. They did it last year two they are picking back on it, but not just for the day, for the months,
they're adding rollbacks. So that's one retailer that's fighting for their share because as customers convert to prime, that's one last customer for for Walmart longer term. You also have what's interesting on the apparel side, Macy's. You know, they said black Fridays back in July, which isn't a category that you would traditionally think Amazon competes in, but it is a category that they're definitely making a bigger plan
for apparel. So on their home page today for Amazon you see apparel thirty person off, So they are making a push to be bigger in apparel, and Macy's a fighting back. Lord and Taylor is fighting back with extended promotions on their website, including free shipping. Yes, I noted that Lord and Taylor offering a triple savings event. They say off site wide free shipping on every order and twenty dollars off if you spend a hundred and seventy
five dollars, so it discounts all across. That's right, all right, thank you very much. Put Amcoyal, a retail analyst and expert for Bloomberg Intelligence. Our thanks also to Cuprea Chowdery, chief marketing officer for Clavis Insight, joining us from Boston, of course, home to Bloomberg. Twelve hundred Amazon shares faring well. Maybe they're on sale today, down about three quarters of a percent, but they're up ten percent so far this year.
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