During one of the busiest and most promotional sales periods of the year, no one is looking to pay full price. But do Amazon Prime Day shoppers prefer across-the-board discounts available to everyone, or coupons they can clip and redeem themselves?
The verdict is in – and it looks like shoppers would rather not clip coupons.
The retail media company Momentum Commerce has analyzed sales from this summer’s Amazon Prime Day event, which ran from July 8th through the 11th. The goal was to determine whether coupons or deals generated more sales among Prime Day shoppers.
And deals won by a long shot.
Momentum Commerce analyzed more than 40 million products sold during the sales event. For those that offered a coupon, sales rose 44% during Prime Day. But those offering deals saw sales soar, by 132%. The halo effect for deals even lasted into the next week, as sales remained elevated at 23% above their typical rate, while products offering coupons saw their post-Prime Day sales slump by 14% less than a typical week.
For marketers, across-the-board promotions are attention-grabbing but expensive. Shoppers like them, but when everyone gets the same deal, sellers end up giving away discounts to shoppers who might otherwise have paid full price. Coupons can be more discriminating – shoppers who use them feel smart, like they got a deal others didn’t, while those who are disinclined to clip coupons often overlook them and end up paying full price, subsidizing the couponers’ discounts.
So why are coupons apparently performing so poorly on Amazon? It may have more to do with Amazon, than with the idea of coupons themselves.
This summer’s Prime Day was the first since Amazon revised its fee structure for deals and coupons. Sellers who offer coupons on Amazon pay for the privilege of doing so, as it can increase the visibility of their products. Previously, that charge was 60 cents per item sold with a coupon. But beginning in June, that changed to a $5 flat fee per coupon, plus 2.5% of the sales generated by that coupon.
As a result, “coupon usage has dropped dramatically on Amazon,” Momentum Commerce noted shortly after the new fee structure took effect. In early June of last year, it found that 13.6% of products offered coupons on Amazon. In early June of this year, that percentage dropped to 9.1%, “suggesting brands are pulling back from this promotional tactic ahead of Prime Day 2025.”
And its post-Prime Day analysis proved that prediction correct.
“This analysis paints a stark picture” of couponing on Amazon, as “coupons are becoming more onerous for brands to run regularly,” Momentum Commerce concluded. And that may be no accident. “Decreased use of coupons may have been a goal of Amazon,” it deduced, in order to help clear out coupon clutter on the search page and highlight steeper price cuts instead.
The biggest takeaway for sellers, then, for the next Prime Day and every day – “prioritize deals over coupons,” Momentum Commerce suggested. “Particularly during big sale events, coupons clearly just don’t drive the same kinds of revenue increases as deal promotions.”
So it could be Amazon not liking coupons, that caused Amazon sellers to sour on coupons, which caused Amazon shoppers to prefer deals over coupons. It may be unwise, then, to extrapolate Amazon’s experience to the broader marketplace. Coupons still have their place, and their fans. But next Prime Day, even coupon fans may find that on Amazon, deal seekers can’t be choosers.
Image source: Amazon
