Perhaps Amazon Prime Day should be called “Amazon Everywhere Day.” Amazon as an online site to buy only books is long gone, of course. In just the last few years, the company has popularized smart homes (and far more) with their virtual assistant voice-based service (Alexa), power many of the world’s websites (Amazon AWS), sell groceries at physical retail stores (Whole Foods), and created a physical convenience store where you can walk in, and walk out, without ever scanning a barcode or waiting for a cashier clerk (Amazon Go).

This past weekend I walked into the Amazon Go store after visiting the adjacent Amazon Spheres workspace that is open to the public two days a month. The store is just as seamless as they say it is. Frankly, it is amazing from a retail user experience perspective.

Amazon is a flagship brand in Seattle, of course, and arguably, in the world. Given that you cannot go far without seeing something related to the company, you would think that everyone has heard of Amazon’s Prime Day, the Black Friday consumer-frenzy shopping experience held in July.

However, in an Adobe Digital Insights (yes, that Adobe) survey of 1,000 U.S. shoppers, they found that 32 percent of consumers have never even heard of “Prime Day” and another 23 percent knew about it but did not shop during that period. Hat tip to BizReports.com for its post on the Adobe study.

Prime Day, started in 2015, has grown each year. That is not just good news for Amazon, it is good news for all the people and small businesses selling on their platform. BizReport.com also reported that, on average, merchants who saw a 10 percent increase during Prime Day 2017 saw revenue increase 2.1x times higher than retailers who didn’t see that Prime Day Increase. This data point applies to large retailers, but over a million small business owners also use the platform to sell and benefit from Prime Day (check back on Tuesday for a related post on Amazon Sellers — I’ll update this post, too).

Well-known analyst and internet expert, Mary Meeker, and her latest Internet Trends report credited Amazon with owning $129 billion of e-commerce gross merchandise value (GMV), a 28 percent share of the market. While the company’s share of the e-commerce pie grows every year, perhaps more impressive is that 49 percent of all product searches now begin on Amazon (Survata survey) . The search numbers must be even larger on Prime Day. Hat tip to Wesley MacLaggan, SVP of Marketing at Marin Software for its Q2 Benchmark Report that included the Mary Meeker stat.

That 28 percent is not enough apparently. Amazon uses every resource at their disposal to make sure this new Prime “holiday” they invented is successful. For example, if you purchased one of Amazon’s Echo voice assistants, in 2017, you received access to special deals two hours earlier than everyone else on Prime Day. Not surprisingly, the most popular product of 2017’s Prime Day was an Echo Dot, luring customers to come back in the following year to get a better shot at deals. For more on this concept, read Jon Bird’s excellent post here on Forbes: Feeding The Flywheel: Why Amazon Prime Day Is So Much More Than A Sale.

Amazon has built a whole ecosystem to ensure their success. The effort has paid off, as 2018’s Prime Day was their most successful yet, with more than 100 million products sold. Amazon also announced that on Prime Day, they had a higher amount of sign-ups for Amazon Prime in one day than ever before. Many of us expected these results, including Forbes contributor Steve Dennis, with his post: Amazon Prime Day: Don’t Fall For The Hype. Though I do not totally agree with Steve, he raises some valid points.

The old adage “a rising tide lifts all boats” also rings true for this new summer buying frenzy. In an effort to combat or just ride alongside Amazon’s sales, numerous other stores have churned out their own deals. For example, around Prime Day, I noticed that Gamestop was offering a sale on the Nintendo Switch and that Barnes and Noble had 10 percent off any book ordered online. According to Adobe Digital Insights, Prime Day has created “a huge opportunity for all online retailers.”

Sadly, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Small businesses can be hurt by Prime Day, which struggles to keep up with the other, bigger companies. One last shoutout to BizReport.com, sellers who have a sales footprint under the $5 million mark actually saw their sales drop by up to 18 percent (I’m assuming this data point is for July sales, but the post didn’t specify).

This sales drop may be partly due to the fact that the cost to run short duration promotional deals on Prime Day or the Today’s Deals page has increased. These deals are called “Amazon Lightning Deals” and went from $500 to $750, a higher price point that small business may not have been able to afford.

Regardless of that, Prime Day is here to stay, and Prime customers love it. I personally took advantage of several of Amazon’s discounts to purchase a book I had been waiting on purchasing, as well as one of Prime’s best deals if you weren’t buying any other deal — a $25 Amazon gift card with an extra $5 credit tacked on for free. Even though I got great deals on both (I got the book for $35 instead of $55), it’s still money I wouldn’t have spent if it wasn’t Prime Day.

Ultimately, this is why Prime Day is so successful, so profitable, to Amazon — it gets you, and me, to spend more at various times of the year, throughout the entire year. Research reports show that Prime members spend far more than average consumers to the tune of $1,400 more per year. Prime Day creates a consumer frenzy at an odd time of year that potentially pulls in more of those 32 percent who have never heard of it as well.

As the cartoon character, Charlie Brown would say, another Prime Day has come and gone. That phrase feels relevant — Prime Day has become a standard, annual event that Amazon has cleverly written into the fabric of our culture.

Oh, and here’s a photo of the Amazon Go store, for those who are interested.