Amazon Prime Day: What consumers are buying

Amazon will be offering discounts on a variety of items during its two-day Prime Day shopping event that began Tuesday.

The Seattle-based ecommerce giant started the sales event in 2015 in response to Singles’ Day, a shopping holiday in China popularized by Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. Other retailers, including Best Buy and Target, are offering their own online discounts during Prime Day, trying to grab the attention of shoppers looking for deals online.

For Amazon, Prime Day has been a way to get people to sign up for its $139 a year Prime membership, which gets shoppers faster shipping and access to the deals. The company 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.

WHAT ARE CONSUMERS LOOKING FOR?

The best deals they can find, including time-sensitive deals that are offered on the site for a short period of time, according to Google search trends.

Data on what customers are directly buying remains limited. But some preliminary information from the data group Numerator shows consumers are purchasing more electronics, a category Amazon tends to emphasize for deals. Electronics were also one of the top purchased categories last year, along with health and beauty items and apparel.

In an analysis of about 4,830 Prime Day orders made by 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Numerator found some of the top items sold Tuesday have been Amazon’s Fire TV Sticks, the Echo Dot smart speakers, Cascade Dishwasher Pods and Amazon Basics Trash Bags. Earlier in the day, Insignia Fire TVs and Apple Airpods were listed as some of the most purchased items.

So far, the average price customers spent per item has been $34.08, Numerator said. Most of the items have...