The John Lewis Christmas advert has been launched, signalling the start of Britain’s seasonal marketing efforts. So with Christmas shopping underway, the Amazon Black Friday Sale in the UK will run over a period of 12 days, rather than one.
It has started today (Monday 14 November) and will come to a close on Black Friday itself, Friday 25 November. This is the first time the Amazon Black Friday Sale will be live for 12 days, and the online retailer claims thousands of deals will save customers millions of pounds.
The introduction of a 12-day Amazon Black Friday Sale comes after the website sold over 7.4m items on Black Friday 2015 – equivalent to 86 goods a second.
Over 1,000 SMEs that operate on the Amazon UK Marketplace are participating in the Amazon Black Friday Sale. This comes after SMEs experienced a record Black Friday in 2015 that resulted in Amazon’s fulfilment service – where items are packed and delivered – increasing over 70 per cent annually.
The Amazon Black Friday Sale is set to introduce new deals as often as every five minutes, and SMEs will provide double the amount of deals as last year.
Meanwhile, to meet the needs of customers and encourage loyalty, Amazon Prime members will have 30-minute priority access to Lightning Deals.
“In response to positive customer feedback for Black Friday deals, we are introducing The Black Friday Sale – 12 days of fantastic deals on must-have gifts and products, saving our customers millions of pounds,” said Doug Gurr, UK country manager, Amazon.
“We’re also thrilled to have over a thousand small businesses featuring in our Black Friday Sale, broadening the selection for our customers and enabling those businesses to boost their sales in the run up to Christmas.”
The Amazon Black Friday Sale has also been launched to mark what the firm believers will be its biggest Christmas on record. Since 2010, the company has invested over £4.6bn in the UK economy to achieve growth, and 2016 will result in 3,500 permanent full-time jobs created across head offices and centres for development, fulfilment and customer services.
Last year, the top deals saw shoppers snapping up the Amazon Fire Tablet, Fire TV stick, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Star Wars toys and Paco Rabanne fragrances.
