Amazon again brags about record-breaking holiday shopping sales

Well, folks, Christmas 2019 is now in the rear view mirror. Hopefully you and your family had a wonderful holiday. Following Christmas, there is one big important tradition -- Amazon's bragging! Yes, every year, the online retailer loves to brag about its successful holiday shopping sales. They are always the best ever, of course, and this year, things are no different.

Yup, Amazon is claiming that it had record-breaking sales during the 2019 holiday shopping season. While the company doesn't share actual sales numbers, I actually don't doubt its claims. This year, when I went to brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday (and the days after), the stores were clearly experiencing a huge drop in foot traffic. In other words, Amazon has seemingly continued its trend of cannibalizing traditional retailers, but this year, it seemed much more dramatic. Hell, I ended up doing 90 percent of my own Christmas shopping on Amazon and I don't even have Prime!

"Amazon today announced that this holiday season was record-breaking thanks to its customers all around the world – billions of items were ordered worldwide and tens of millions of Amazon Devices were purchased worldwide. Throughout the season, Amazon offered customers incredible deals every day and deeper discounts and more Deals of the Day than ever before during shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday," says Amazon.

The popular online retailer further explains, "Some of the best-selling products and brands this holiday season were the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, Echo Show 5, L.O.L. Surprise! Glitter Globe Doll Winter Disco Series with Glitter Hair, iRobot Roomba 675 Robot Vacuum, HAUS LABORATORIES, Carhartt, AmazonBasics, and Champion items. Popular departments customers shopped in Amazon’s Stores in the U.S. were toys, fashion, home and beauty with more than half a billion total items ordered."

Amazon shares the following interesting details about its 2019 shipments and deliveries.

• More people tried Prime this holiday season than any previous year – in fact, in one week alone, more than 5 million new customers started Prime free trials or began paid memberships worldwide.
• In 2019, Amazon’s dedicated last-mile delivery network delivered over 3.5 billion customer packages globally.
• This holiday season, the number of items that were delivered with Prime Free One-Day and Prime Free Same-Day Delivery nearly quadrupled compared to the same time period last holiday season, making this Amazon’s fastest holiday yet.
• Over 100 million items sold by independent third-party sellers – mostly small and medium-sized businesses – were shipped with Prime Free One-Day Delivery over the holidays in the U.S.
• In the U.S., the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick 4K, Echo Show 5, Echo Auto, and Amazon Smart Plug were among the most popular items shipped with Prime Free One-Day Delivery during the holidays. Other popular items shipped with One-Day Delivery this holiday season include Melissa & Doug Scratch Art, and the Wyze Cam Indoor Wireless Smart Home Camera.
• Millions more items were ordered to an Amazon Hub location during the holiday season than ever before.
• 60 percent more customers shipped their holiday order to an Amazon pickup point this season compared to last year.
• The top ten cities that used an Amazon Locker or Amazon Counter location this holiday were Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, Berkeley (CA), Austin and Columbus.
• The last delivery with Amazon’s ultra-fast delivery arrived on Christmas Eve at 11:59pm PT in Seattle, WA.

A big part of Amazon's business these days are Alexa and its own devices, and it sold a ton of them. The company shares information below.

• It was a record holiday season for Amazon Devices and Alexa – customers worldwide purchased tens of millions of Amazon Devices.
• Shoppers purchased millions more Amazon Devices compared to last holiday and the best-selling devices worldwide included Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote and Echo Show 5.
• Customers interacted with Alexa at record levels this holiday season – from finding recipes, to showing who’s at the front door, finding holiday TV shows and movies, turning on holiday lights and more.
• Customers asked Alexa for recipes and cooking advice tens of millions of times this holiday season as Alexa helped make holiday feasts, cookies and cocktails. Some of the most popular recipes this holiday season included Thanksgiving Turkey, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Fluffy Mashed Potatoes.
• Customers received hundreds of millions of doorbell and motion announcements via Alexa this holiday season from carolers to delivery drivers and holiday guests.
• The most searched for holiday movie on Fire TV with Alexa was Home Alone, followed by Elf and The Grinch.
• Alexa helped turn on holiday lights tens of millions of times.
• Alexa helped customers connect with family and friends near and far tens of millions of times this holiday season, through video calling, messaging, and drop-in.

While Amazon's success is great for Amazon, the question becomes, is this good for the economy overall? Sure, consumers are shopping more conveniently and potentially saving money, but traditional retailers and shopping malls are being decimated by Amazon's cutthroat business. Amazon is obviously bad for competition. True, Amazon is creating plenty of jobs, but they aren't necessarily high-paying positions -- many of its workers complain about terrible conditions too.

Did you do a lot of your holiday shopping on Amazon this year? Did you see a noticeable drop in the number of shoppers in brick-and-mortar stores? Please tell me your experiences in the comment below.

Image Credit: Milles Studio / Shutterstock

Image credit: Hadrian / Shutterstock