Although Amazon starts offering discounts weeks before Black Friday, Black Friday still has one of the highest single-day sales of the year, second only to Cyber Monday. Amazon also announced that Cyber Monday discount week will start on the 24th and last for a week, and promised that this year "the discounts will be better and the selection will be greater."
Amazon set a single-day sales record on Cyber Monday last year. Although the members-only "Prime Day" in 2018 broke this record, because the event only lasted 36 hours, Cyber Monday is expected to retain the crown of single-day sales this year.
Amazon's arch-rival Walmart is also betting big on Cyber Monday, promising more inventory and deeper discounts.
Although Amazon's sales performance is impressive, it still has some problems to deal with, such as the recent leakage of customers' names and email addresses. An Amazon spokesperson said the issue has been resolved and affected customers have been notified.
Not only that, hundreds of Amazon employees in Europe chose the busy Black Friday to protest against the "inhumane" working environment, holding up signs that read "We are not robots". Workers at Amazon logistics centers in Germany, Spain and France went on strike, and employees at other operations in Italy and the United Kingdom also made their voices heard through protests.
Amazon said on the 23rd that the protests in Europe would not affect its operations, and also refuted that the number of people participating in the protests was not as high as claimed by some trade unions. The company said in an email that it has invested $27 billion in Europe since 2010 and created more than 75,000 full-time jobs.
