The Logic Behind Amazon's Prime Day

If you haven’t heard about Prime Day yet, you soon will be…it’s going to be a blowout media hoopla event! Amazon has anointed Wednesday, July 15 to be Prime Day! What type of holiday is Prime Day you’re probably asking? It’s a self-interested homage to rock bottom prices and 2 day shipping.
So why is everyone interested in a sale created by a retailer? After all, larger retailers such as Wal-Mart and Costco wouldn’t receive such interest if they held a sale. Because we know that Amazon doesn’t care much about profit (on an impressive $89 billion in revenues in FY14, Amazon’s operating margin was a meager 0.2%...nope, that’s not a misprint.
Please check out my latest piece for the Harvard Business Review which discusses why Prime Day is a well-calculated invasion into the turf of brick and mortar retailers.
