Geo: Europe
Area: Electronics
Type: Market
Theme: Commercial

🌀 Key points

  • Prices rose steadily in the month before Prime Day

  • Electronics dropped from €148 to €142 during Prime

  • Prime Day prices matched levels seen 6 weeks prior

💎 Data Gem

If you felt like Prime Day deals weren’t that great this year—you were right. Amazon’s price drops in 2025 looked more like rollbacks to older prices than real discounts.

🗺️ What’s the Maze?

Let’s dissect the data like it’s a receipt.

Omnia Retail tracked ~1,000 consumer electronics products in Europe and found a clear pattern of strategic price manipulation ahead of Prime Day 2025:

  • Month before Prime: Prices gradually climbed, reaching an average of €148.28—up from €142.78 a month earlier

  • 2–3 weeks before Prime: Prices dipped slightly to €145.50, offering the illusion of movement

  • Prime Day begins: Prices “drop” back to €142.77, which is basically where they started six weeks ago

In other words, retailers jacked up prices in advance, then cut them just enough to create a “deal.” But that deal? It's mostly smoke and mirrors.

This pricing loop doesn’t mean Prime Day is a scam—but it does mean consumers are often saving less than they think.

It’s not that discounts didn’t exist. It’s that many of them were relative to inflated prices—not actual value gains.

This tactic is not unique to Amazon, but Amazon’s Prime Day—because of its scale and hype—has become the Olympics of pricing psychology.

🏁 Why It Matters?

This is a masterclass in how platforms use anchor pricing to create the illusion of value:

  • Price manipulation 101: Retailers raise prices weeks in advance to set a higher “before” price

  • Optical discounts: The eventual price cuts look impressive, but only return the product to its pre-hike level

  • Consumer trust at risk: As more shoppers catch on, Amazon risks eroding long-term loyalty in exchange for short-term spikes

In Europe, where inflation is still top of mind for many households, these tactics don’t go unnoticed. Savvy shoppers and deal-tracking sites increasingly expose this behavior, which could force more transparency—or trigger regulation.

Bottom line: You didn’t get a huge deal on that €149 speaker—you just avoided the mark-up from last month.

🎓 Found this insightful?

📖 Data Source

Name: Only for MarketMaze+ subscribers
Publish date: Only for MarketMaze+ subscribers
Region: Only for MarketMaze+ subscribers
Method: Only for MarketMaze+ subscribers
Link to source: Only for MarketMaze+ subscribers

See raw data from the chart below 👇 ((Only for MarketMaze+ subscribers)

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