Amazon’s Last Chance for Cyber Monday Deals

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 4:29PM EST · Published Dec 4, 6:36AM EST

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Amazon’s Last Chance for Cyber Monday Deals — © Thinkstock

Just as some stores opened before the Thanksgiving weekend in the hope of gaining sales before the holiday season, others have extended special discounts well after Cyber Monday. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is among the most prominent of these. Cyber Monday sales have hot ended at the huge e-commerce retailer.

Cyber Monday is nothing more than a catch-all word anymore. All it means is that retailers will push to get people to buy online as they shop. Amazon has made Cyber Monday into a week-long national retail holiday during which people can buy heavily discounted watches, vacuum cleaners and socks. Some of these discounts are only good for a few hours. Maybe Amazon believes this urgency also will turn shoppers into buyers — before discounts disappear.

Some of the Amazon sales discount merchandise 70% to 75%. This tactic may clean out unwanted inventory. It may be planned loss leaders to get shoppers in the e-commerce door where they will buy items on which Amazon makes money. Maybe Amazon is just making a mistake.

The most aggressive tactic of the extended Cyber Monday is what the company calls Prime Now — “Skip the Trip. One hour delivery.” The program almost certainly has to lose money, but it comes with a trick. It is only available to Amazon Prime members who pay $99 a year for their membership, which has among its benefits photo storage, ad-free music and a massive collection of programs that are available via streaming. The service has powerful rivals, in particular Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX). Holiday promotions to sell Prime can’t be matched by these rivals.

Something like Prime Now has not, and probably cannot, be offered by any other retailer. Amazon had to have set up a complex system of warehouses, inventory tracking and delivery services to make the service work. A full week of Cyber Monday and the miracle of one-hour delivery makes Amazon’s goal of a $35 billion quarter likely.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.