Key Takeaways:
Amazon Prime Day Week 2025 proved that bigger is better this year, pulling in the most significant online sales in the event’s history, with customers filling bigger basket sizes, spread over the platform’s multiday event.
Now that the dust and deals have settled, it’s time to go beyond the numbers and find out which strategies won Prime Day, and what drove consumers to buy. We will take a deep dive into Amazon Prime Day 2025 consumers—what were their priorities? What ultimately led them to make a purchase?
We looked to the Market Defense Amazon Prime Day 2025 Beauty Report to give our readers the answers they need.
Bigger, Smarter Baskets
Basket sizes were up this year, with an average household spend of $156, up 2.7% year over year (YoY). Many consumers prepped for Prime Day Week by researching potential deals with AI and social media, which resulted in well-informed consumers stocking up on essentials before potential tariff-related price hikes. Past Prime Day events may have attracted impulsive shoppers enticed by deep discounts. But this year, consumers made deliberate, well-researched decisions, with 51% holding out for specific items, 37% browsing general deals, and 37% stocking up on staples. Average order size and price per item declined, reflecting smarter, discount-focused purchases, while recession indicator Buy Now, Pay Later usage increased 7.4% YoY.
Beauty and Cosmetics accounted for 25% of the overall Amazon Prime Day categories purchased. With 57% of mass beauty shoppers now also buying prestige (up 2.4 points from last year), Amazon has solidified its position as a one-stop retailer for beauty shoppers.
Who Is the Prime Day 2025 Shopper?
According to the Market Defense report, the typical Prime Day 2025 shopper was a high-income, suburban woman aged 45-64, a sharp shift from the 35-44 crowd that dominated in years past.
These seasoned, informed shoppers were mostly existing Prime members (87%), proving their loyalty to the event, with nearly 50% logging on just for Prime Day and 90% saying they have shopped past Prime Day sales.
Web Searches, TikTok, and AI, Oh My!
Where did the typical Prime Day shopper find the information that informed her buying decisions? Consumers utilized AI more than ever to guide their purchasing decisions with AI-powered chat tools and browsers, GenAI traffic to US retail sites surging 3,300% YoY. Despite the surge of AI research, paid search dominated, driving 28.5% of US e-commerce sales during Prime Day—a 5.6% YoY increase.
Influencer marketing, particularly TikTok influencers, also played a significant role, leading 19.9% of US online retail sales during the event, up 15% YoY. Prime Day shoppers were 10x more likely to purchase after seeing influencer content. Influencers pushed shoppers to Amazon with daily unboxing videos, highlights of top deals in specific categories, and directed consumers to the Amazon storefront to find trending products, making viral hits many of the year’s top sellers.
For example, TikTok views surged from consumers searching “Tattoo Cover Up Makeup Waterproof,” and hashtags #PrimeDay (177.8k), #AmazonPrimeDay (119.3k), and #PrimeDayDeals (41.1k) reigned supreme on the platform.
Competition for ad space also intensified among brands, with top-of-search CPCs exceeding $10. Beauty conglomerate brands like Estée Lauder bid aggressively, making top-of-search visibility costly for indie brands.
Rising Tide Lifts All Beauty Retailers
Amazon’s competitors in the beauty space, like Sephora, Ulta Beauty, Nordstrom, and Target, attempted to take on the online retail giant by countering Prime Day with major beauty deals, gifts-with-purchase, and loyalty perks.
“Prime Day was the main event, but everyone else [beauty retailers] showed up ready to compete,” said Vanessa Kuykendall, Chief Marketing Officer at Market Defense. “Ulta dropped a new K-beauty lineup featuring Medicube and TirTir just before the sale, tapping into brands that had largely been exclusive to Amazon in the US Sephora-focused, on-foot traffic with Lyft credits and in-store coupons to get ahead of the Prime rush. Ulta [Beauty] came for the brands, Sephora came for the experience—but Amazon is still where discovery meets delivery. And the real winner? The beauty shopper, with more ways to shop, more perks to choose from, and loyalty rewards, no matter where they click.”
Top-selling beauty brands included:
TikTok trends and web search lifts are directly tied to sales performance during Prime Day—when consumers see it, they search it, and then buy it. For example, #dove averages 558.1K weekly TikTok views, and during Prime Day, “Dove Body Wash” became the #2 most searched keyword across beauty, propelling the product to the #4 overall sales spot—beating out trendier competitors. Body Mists also surged, with internet searches up 155%, contributing to 6 of the top 10 best-selling fragrances during the event being mists, not traditional perfumes.
Brands that won big this Prime Day approached it with a unified strategy across both DTC and Amazon, according to Market Defense Chief Operating Officer Karan Raturi. “They [brands] didn’t just increase ad spend by 1.5–2x their norm—they also leaned into aggressive promotions, pricing down by 30% or more. By activating their DTC loyalists through targeted CRM campaigns, they [brands] delivered exceptional value on the world’s most convenient shopping platform. That surge in momentum translated into algorithmic lift, boosting organic visibility and vaulting them into bestseller status. The result? Significant new customer acquisition. Once again, Prime Day proved that bold, coordinated investments during tentpole moments can be a major growth catalyst.”
