Amazon Prime Day comes amid slowdown in online sales growth

An Amazon Prime truck passes by a sign outside an Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York, on March 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)

Amazon is heading into its annual Prime Day sales event on Tuesday much differently than how it entered the pandemic.

The company has long used the two-day event — one of its biggest all year — to lure people to its Prime membership, for which Amazon recently raised the price to $139 a year from $119 a year.

Amazon doesn’t disclose total Prime Day sales, though research firm Insider Intelligence suggests sales could climb to about $7.76 billion in the U.S. alone — or 16.8% over last year — in part because of the event’s mid-July timing, which compared to last year’s June date would allow the company to capture more consumers doing back-to-school shopping.