Amazon announces second Prime Day of the year in 15 countries

Amazon is adding another Prime Day to the calendar.

The company announced this Monday (26) that the sale, called “Prime Early Access Sale”, will take place from October 11 to 12.

The 48-hour event is for Prime membership program members only and will feature discounts on “hundreds of thousands” of items.

The “Prime Early Access Sale” will be available in 15 countries, including Canada, China, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Brazil is not included in the list.

Amazon is following its rivals to jumpstart the holiday shopping season.

Walmart announced last week that it will begin its holiday sales as early as next month, and Target said its shopping kick-off, called “Deal Days”, will run from October 6 to 8.

Launching holiday shopping sales in October will help attract budget-conscious shoppers, according to Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData Retail.

“Consumers will start holiday shopping earlier as they look to spread the costs at a time when household incomes are being squeezed,” he previously told CNN Business .

Hanging up all these early deals, however, might not spark a shopping frenzy during the most important sales period of the year for retailers, which historically starts in earnest on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Households in the US continue to grapple with persistent high inflation eating into their budgets and savings, forcing them to cut back.

Consultancy Deloitte expects overall holiday retail sales for the key holiday gift-buying months of November, December and January (when Christmas gift cards are typically redeemed) to increase from 4% to 6%, well below the robust 15.1% increase for the same period last year.

– Parija Kavilanz contributed to this story