Fear missing out? Amazon knows it and uses it to make Prime Day sales

Amazon knows how easily we get FOMO. It uses our fear of missing out to make sales on Prime Day.

This year, Amazon Prime Day will run for 48 hours, starting at midnight PT on July 15. The retail giant said last year's day of deals and discounts was its biggest yet as it sold 100 million products, and having those extra hours this year will likely end in even better results. After all, people don't want to left out.

"The psychology is really just the fear of missing out and timing," said Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist. Similar to Black Friday being just before the holiday shopping season, Prime Day comes just before the back-to-school shopping season, retail's second busiest shopping season. "People don't just want bargains, they are shopping anyways and have needs."

Amazon makes sure customers will turn to them to satisfy those needs with marketing campaigns that include a Taylor Swift concert, which took place Wednesday night, and a line of beauty products from Lady Gaga, which is sold exclusively by the company. It not only advertises its own surge of deals, its rivals do as well with their own competing events and messaging.  

Take eBay's ad where a father asks his teenage daughter, who happens to be named Alexa, if anything good happens on Prime Day to which she responds "Yeah, did you check eBay?"  Simply put, Prime Day seems to be everywhere.

"There's this sense that Amazon is for everybody and it's everywhere," Yarrow said. "They upped the coolness factor associated with Amazon a lot with these campaigns."

Source: CNBC

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