Newsmakers

Kirthi Kalyanam, director of the Retail Management Institute, L.J. Skaggs Distinguished Professor, and marketing department chair, was quoted in an article from the Boston Globe which looked at the success of Amazon.com, Inc.’s third annual Prime Day. This 30-hour sale is intended to turn Prime members into devoted Amazon buyers. This was the biggest day of the year for the company, blowing out sale days such as Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Amazon saw a 50% increase from last year in the amount of Prime members who bought items.

An excerpt from The Boston Globe:

Winning shopper loyalty through membership programs is a big challenge for retailers, but Amazon has found a winning formula with Prime, said Kirthi Kalyanam, director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University.

“Academic research has shown that consumers have lots of difficulty predicting their future preferences, hence it is very hard for them to predict and hence decide whether they will use Prime to its fullest extent or not,” he said. “However, by conducting Prime Day, Amazon allows consumers to have lots and lots of the greatest deals on one day. By buying these deals, consumers may figure out immediately whether they can recoup the benefits of Prime all in one day. Once they get Prime they have a tendency to consolidate their purchases on Amazon.”

Read the full article Learn more about Professor Kirthi Kalyanam