Amazon 'Prime Day' to Help Create New Black Friday as Company Celebrates 20th Anniversary
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Amazon has declared July 15 "Prime Day," an event with which the online retail giant hopes to create a new kind of Black Friday.
According to CNN Money, customers will be able to find special deals on the company's website, and Amazon claims that there will be more bargains than on the traditional shopping day after Thanksgiving, when stores across the U.S. open at predawn hours with deep discounts.
All Amazon customers, however, are not created equal when it comes to the special event, the company's vice president, Greg Greeley, seemed to suggest in a statement.
"Prime Day is a one-day only event filled with more deals than Black Friday, exclusively for Prime members around the globe," Greeley explained. "If you're not already a Prime member, you'll want to join so you don't miss out on one of the biggest deals extravaganzas in the world."
For new customers wishing to take advantage of Prime Day, billed as a "global shopping event," the company will be offering a 30-day free trial.
Prime -- a special membership that gains subscribers free two-day shipping and discounted one-day shipping within the contiguous United States -- has been offered by Amazon since 2005. American customers currently pay a flat annual fee of $99 for the product, which also includes video and music streaming services.
The subscription has proved popular, resulting in competitor Walmart premiering a similar service earlier this year, USA Today recalled. For $50 a year, the retail giant promises to deliver products within three days or less. But unlike in Amazon's case, deliveries will not take place on Sundays, the newspaper added.
During the 20 years of its existence, Amazon -- which started out as a small online bookseller -- has become the largest Internet-based retailer in the U.S. The company recently reported an annual revenue of almost $89 billion, and its founder, Jeff Bezos, in 2013 purchased the Washington Post for $250 million in cash.
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