The Walmart Weekend Plus has passed, here are our thoughts on the event and what it means for Amazon Prime Day 2022.
Did you know Walmart has its own Amazon Prime Day? Late last month the retailer held its Walmart Plus Weekend sale, which was its first stab at creating a huge sales event for the members of its premium subscription service. We covered this event here at TechRadar and found it a mixed bag. The savings were actually pretty good – with deals on everything from cheap laptops to household essentials – but overall interest felt lukewarm at best. Announced barely two weeks before the fact, and coming hot off the heels of the yearly Memorial Day sales, it felt like the brand faced an uphill battle to build awareness for its big day. No one expected Walmart to hit a home run on its first attempt, however, and the advent of a rival sales event has us thinking about what this means for the upcoming Prime Day event. We’re hoping Amazon comes out the gates hot this year – not just responding to increasing competition, but also as a response to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Budgets are tightening rapidly and the retailer even went so far as to publish a growth warning back in May (opens in new tab). If it’s going to get back on track, Prime Day is going to be the ticket to do so. Will it be business as usual though? We think it’s highly likely the retailer will look to shake things up this year. Walmart’s Prime Day rival Walmart Plus Weekend seemingly got off to a fairly modest start. A report from the retail analytics company Numerator (opens in new tab) has claimed that only 34% of Walmart shoppers actually knew about the retailer’s event over the weekend. That’s seemingly poor versus Prime Day’s whopping 94% of awareness among members, but it’s not surprising. After all, this is the first event of its kind at the retailer while Prime Day has had a whole 7 years to gain momentum. Interestingly, of the people who did take part, overall satisfaction with the quality of deals was higher – with 39% of respondents being ‚overwhelmingly satisfied‘ with Walmart’s deals versus 27% for Amazon Prime Day in 2021. This is the biggest indication that if Walmart’s event failed to make waves, it was due to awareness rather than the customer’s reception to the deals. There are some promising signs for the future of this event too.
