Whole Foods got a big Prime Day boost of its own: Study

Amazon’s (AMZN) leveraging of Whole Foods during Prime Day continues to pay dividends, as the 2 day sales bonanza successfully drove significant foot traffic to the high end grocer, according to new data.

According to analytics firm Placer.ai, Whole Foods saw a 20.3% spike in visits from its summer baseline on the Saturday of Prime Day, which soft-launched on July 13, and a 26.8% increase on Sunday July 14. On those days, Amazon offered members a $10 credit toward Prime Day (which ran officially from July 15-16) if they shopped at Whole Foods.

Last year, those numbers were 22.4% on the Saturday before Prime Day and 26.8% the following Sunday, Placer.ai data found.

“Once again, Amazon’s Prime Day 2019 strongly demonstrates great levels of crossover between offline and online pushes,” Placer.ai wrote.

“Other big box retailers need to take note: the Amazon and Whole Foods synergy is mutually beneficial and a model to replicate,” the firm noted.

Yet as Amazon’s competitors begin to better understand the importance of “Christmas in July” to consumers, they have begun to get in on the action offline too, Placer.ai found.

Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), and Best Buy (BBY), all of which hopped on the Prime Day deal train by offering specials of their own, saw significantly more traffic in their stores over the week of Prime Day deals.

In fact, the world’s largest retailer saw in store traffic spike 25.7% above its average on the Friday ahead of Prime Day, 37.5% on that Saturday, and 26.1% on Sunday, as it rolled out its own “Big Save” event.

While midweek traffic generally sits below averages for retailers, Target saw its traffic boosted above the average by between 3 and 5 percentage points on the Monday-Wednesday of the Prime Day 2019 event. Best Buy also saw an uptick in its weekday numbers.

In previous years, all three retailers had struggled to keep up with Amazon’s success over the weekend, but the tides have begun to turn.

Amazon’s Prime Day as a whole this year smashed its high expectations, as members bought over 175 million items over the 48 hours, up from 100 million in 36 hours in 2018, and saved over 1 billion dollars, the online retailer said.

Calder McHugh is an Associate Editor at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter: @Calder_McHugh.

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