The top-selling Amazon Prime Day picks: Household must-haves dominate U.S. sales

According to market research firm Numerator, this year’s Prime Day sales event was dominated by purchases that consumers deemed useful. That included purchasing items in categories like apparel, home goods, and household essentials, the firm found, noting that the trio were the top selling sectors.

The 48-hour event, which took place on July 16-17, garnered a whopping $14.2 billion in online sales, setting a new record for Amazon $AMZN as its biggest Prime Day thus far. The bargain event has only been around for nine years, launching in July 2015.

This year’s five top-selling items for U.S. consumers included – Amazon Fire TV Sticks, Premier Protein Shakes, Liquid I.V. Packets, Glad Trash Bags, and COSRX Snail Mucin Serum.

As discretionary spending modestly begins to rise, consumers are continuing to seek out bargains in the inflation economy. Elevated prices aren’t stopping them from doing at least some shopping.

Numerator found that about 188,000 items were purchased during the event, with over 93,500 of those purchases being Prime Day orders. The average order size during the two-day event was about $58, Numerator noted, with the average price per item coming to roughly $28. Over half of shoppers said they bought an item they had been holding off on until the sale.

Meanwhile, the average household spent about $152. That could in part be due to back-to-school spending, which saw a big boost in sales as parents stocked up on backpacks and lunchboxes.

Amazon’s Prime Day event has now become a staple in e-commerce shopping — so much so that it has pushed retailers like Target $TGT and Walmart $WMT into the fray with their own discount deal weeks. It even inspired TikTok to try a similar event.

But even so, Amazon, the world’s fifth biggest company by market cap, continues to lead the pack with its play on Christmas-in-July.