Amazon dominates Prime Day as rivals see low deal searches
New data from search and product discovery platform Constructor reveals that shoppers focused almost exclusively on Amazon for deals during Prime Day 2024 and 2025, with little evidence that consumers sought out competing offers from other online retailers.
A detailed analysis of over 160 million search queries across more than 100 retail sites was carried out during the Prime Day period in mid-2024 and 2025. Despite numerous retailers launching substantial sales events designed to coincide with Amazon's Prime Day, the findings show there was no measurable increase in sales-related searches on non-Amazon sites over the promotional period.
Deal searches unchanged
Constructor's investigation found that, although a range of global and UK-based retailers, including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Duluth Trading Co., Argos, JD Williams and Boots, all operated promotions to compete with Prime Day, most consumers did not appear to search beyond Amazon for sales. Search terms such as "sale", "promo" and "clearance" did not see a noticeable rise on other retail platforms during Prime Day 2024 or 2025, suggesting a narrow consumer focus on Amazon alone for July discounts.
This pattern stands in marked contrast to consumer behaviour on Black Friday. Analysis of the same dataset demonstrated that promo-related search activity across these retailers jumped by 1.5 times during Black Friday 2024, indicating that shoppers expect promotions across a broad swathe of online stores at that time of year.
Category variation
The data also found that outside the Prime Day period, deal-hunting activity varies significantly across retail categories. Beauty shoppers are more inclined to search for "sale", while those looking for fashion tend to use both "sale" and "clearance" terms, and home improvement customers often favour words such as "offer" and "outlet." These trends suggest an ongoing consumer interest in promotions, but with varying search behaviours depending on retail sector and promotions calendar.
Prime Day expectations
Nate Roy, Strategic Director of Ecommerce Innovation at Constructor, attributed Amazon's Prime Day dominance to nearly a decade of consumer conditioning. Roy noted,
"For nearly a decade, Amazon has built Prime Day into more than just a mid-summer promotion - it's become a cultural event that rivals Black Friday in terms of visibility and shopper engagement."
He continued,
"And in recent years, with many retailers and brands launching their own major promotions during that window, the result is a July sales landscape that's increasingly crowded - and coordinated."
Roy highlighted that despite efforts by other retailers to capitalise on consumer interest in deals during Prime Day, awareness and expectation among shoppers remains highly focused on Amazon. He said,
"But despite these parallel efforts, the data shows that most shoppers aren't trained to look for deals across other sites. Even though early sales results from other retailers have been promising, our data suggests that they have yet to fully capitalise on the opportunity - there's still a lot of potential left on the table. To capture it, retailers need to find ways to increase awareness. It's not enough to just run a sale; to maximise effectiveness, you've got to let people know it exists. That means using personalised marketing and making sure your site's search, navigation, and other product discovery tools draw attention to deals and make them easy to find."
Retail implications
The findings imply that for non-Amazon retailers, running a promotion in July is not in itself sufficient to entice Prime Day shoppers, unless accompanied by efforts to raise awareness of alternative sales. Enhanced marketing, tailored search functionality, and clearer navigation around deals are among the strategies suggested to help retailers share in the heightened consumer attention generated by the mid-summer shopping event.
