Amazon Prime Day apparently took a big bite out of traditional retailers in terms of store visits and foot traffic, according to data from Sense360.
The analytics firm, which is used by retailers to cull consumer insights, benchmark campaigns and gather competitive intelligence, looked at over 1.3 million “anonymous retail visits” to gauge the impact on traffic. The firm looked at Tuesday visits four months prior to Amazon Prime Day and then segmented the data by consumers who had the Amazon app installed versus ones without the app.
After comparing the averages of non-Prime Day Tuesdays with Prime Day, Sense360 found that for consumers who had the Amazon app installed on their devices, the decline in foot traffic (against the baseline) by this segment was 32 percent. For shoppers without the app, visits to retailers were down 7 percent against the baseline.
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Looking at each consumer cluster in the data set (shoppers with and without the Amazon app), but segmenting the data by specific retail brands, Sense360 found that Sears suffered a 36 percent decline in store traffic on Prime Day against the baseline. J.C. Penney experienced a 34 percent drop while Kohl’s fell 31 percent.
At Target, there was a decline in foot traffic against the baseline of 28 percent while at Home Depot it was 24 percent. Wal-Mart, which the firm noted “did not have a dedicated in-store sales promotion during Prime Day,” had a traffic decline of 23 percent.
Regarding the “anonymous retail visits,” Sense360’s methodology relies on complex algorithms. “At the core of our research is our sensor technology which uses the mobile sensors built into smartphones to understand a user’s location and activity,” the company noted. “We have trained our algorithms with hundreds of thousands of labeled data points and incorporate data from GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer, Wi-Fi, ambient light and many other sensors. This provides us with an anonymous, but highly accurate understanding of where, how and when people interact with physical locations and businesses.”
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