Amazon’s Prime Day Sends July Retail Total Sales Soaring

According to Bank of America, Amazon’s Prime Day promotion in July boosted July’s total retail sales up more than expected.

Bank of America’s head of U.S. economics, Michelle Meyer, has expected retail sales excluding autos to have risen by 0.6% and about half of that would have been from Amazon’s Prime Day and other promotions by Amazon competitors.

The Wall Street consensus forecast is for a 0.3% gain in July on headline retail sales and 0.4%, excluding autos, according to Refinitiv. Meyer is projecting headline retail sales to rise by 0.4%.

“We’re above consensus. We think it’s a strong month,” said Meyer. “It wasn’t just Amazon. A number of retailers had these summer Black Friday deals.”

This is a very strong period for consumer spending which started in March. Part of the reason it was so strong was the beginning of the year was so weak,” Meyer said in a telephone interview with CNBC.

The BofA economists have said that over half the U.S. was impacted by hot weather in July.

“We find that spending was higher in the impacted states, particularly in groceries, utilities and gasoline. Indeed, once the heat wave started on July 13th, the growth rate in spending in the impacted states diverged, ” the economists wrote.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and have not been compensated for this article.