Amazon Prime Day 2026 begins on June 23. Within hours of the announcement, Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Kohl’s, and a dozen other retailers will launch their own competing sales events. They do this every year. The assumption is that matching Amazon’s urgency with in-store and online deals will defend — or even grow — physical retail traffic during the biggest online shopping event of the year.
We checked seven years of foot traffic data. Some counter-sales work. Some have never worked. And the pattern tells you more about which retail categories are structurally vulnerable to e-commerce than any earnings call ever will.
The 2025 results: a clean split
Using PassBy’s foot traffic data, we tracked weekly visits per store for nine major retailers during Prime Day 2025 (July 8–11). Every retailer on this list ran some form of competing promotion. The question is whether those promotions translated into more people walking through the door.
|
+7.2%
|
No specific event | |
|
+6.8%
|
Target Circle Week | |
|
+5.4%
|
Walmart Deals | |
|
+4.0%
|
Deal-seeking halo | |
|
+0.6%
|
Anniversary Sale | |
|
+0.2%
|
In-store promotions | |
|
-1.2%
|
In-store promotions | |
|
-4.0%
|
Black Friday in July | |
|
-6.0%
|
In-store promotions |
Mass merchants and value retailers gained traffic. Electronics and home improvement lost it. Department stores were flat to slightly negative. All of them ran counter-sales.
The promotion was not the differentiator. The category was.
Seven years of Prime Day counter-sales: who learned and who didn’t
We pulled Prime Day week traffic going back to 2019 — the year Target Circle launched and retailers began formally competing with Amazon’s event. The multi-year data reveals which counter-sales are maturing and which were never going to work.
| 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0.5% | +4.3% | +1.9% | -2.4% | +6.8% | |
| +3.5% | +4.6% | +1.6% | -3.1% | +5.4% | |
| +0.1% | -0.2% | -4.6% | +0.9% | -3.4% | |
| +2.4% | +3.6% | +2.3% | -2.0% | +7.2% | |
| — | — | — | -1.8% | -6.0% |
Target: Circle Week took four years to click
Target launched the Circle loyalty programme in 2019 and began scheduling promotional events around Prime Day almost immediately. The early results were modest — just +0.5% in year one. It took until 2022 for Target to generate a clear traffic lift (+4.3%), and even then the results were inconsistent — 2024 was negative (-2.4%).
But 2025’s +6.8% suggests Target has cracked the formula. Circle Week is no longer a defensive reaction to Prime Day. It has become a standalone shopping occasion that happens to coincide with it.
Walmart: the same learning curve
Walmart’s counter-sale history mirrors Target’s: early experiments, uneven results, and a 2025 breakout. Walmart+ Week debuted strongly in 2022 (+4.6%), faded in 2023 (+1.6%), misfired in 2024 (-3.1%), and came back as the refined “Walmart Deals” event in 2025 (+5.4%).
Both Target and Walmart had a bad 2024 — possibly because Prime Day fell later (July 16–17), leaving less separation from the July 4th holiday. In 2025, Prime Day moved earlier (July 8–11), giving retailers a cleaner promotional window. The bigger story: both retailers are now consistently converting counter-sales into physical traffic.
Best Buy: Black Friday in July has never worked for store traffic
Best Buy launched “Black Friday in July” as a direct response to Prime Day — aggressive, week-long promotions with deep discounts on laptops, TVs, and gaming hardware. The sale drives significant online revenue.
It has never consistently driven in-store traffic.
In seven years, Best Buy’s counter-sale has produced a positive traffic result exactly once (2024, barely at +0.9%). The trend is moving in the wrong direction — 2023 (-4.6%) and 2025 (-3.4%) saw the largest Prime Day week dips on record. This is not a promotional problem. It is a category problem. Electronics is specification-driven and research-heavy. When Prime Day creates a comparison-shopping window, the research happens online — and increasingly, so does the purchase.
Costco: does not need a counter-sale, never has
Costco has never run a formal Prime Day counter-event. It does not need one. The membership model insulates it — Costco members are not comparison-shopping against Amazon in the same way. Bulk pricing, treasure-hunt merchandising, and in-store-only product rotations create a shopping experience that cannot be replicated by a two-day online sale. Traffic was positive during Prime Day week in six of seven years, peaking at +7.2% in 2025.
| Retailer | 2024 | 2025 | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| -2.4% | +6.8% | ↗ Improving | |
| -3.1% | +5.4% | ↗ Improving | |
| +0.9% | -3.4% | ↘ Worsening | |
| +2.9% | +0.2% | → Stable | |
| -1.8% | -6.0% | ↘ Worsening |
Why some counter-sales drive traffic and others don’t
The seven-year pattern reveals a structural divide, not a promotional one.
1. The product requires a physical interaction — groceries, apparel to try on, home décor to see in person.
2. The counter-sale activates existing trip intent — shoppers who were already planning a weekly visit go this week instead of next.
3. The retailer has broad enough assortment to justify the trip — a Circle Week deal on cleaning products leads to browsing clothing, home goods, and groceries.
1. The purchase decision happens online — electronics and home improvement shoppers research specs and compare prices on screens, not in aisles.
2. The product does not benefit from physical inspection — a laptop is the same in-store as in the photo.
3. The trip is single-purpose — no impulse browsing across departments.
What this means for Prime Day 2026
Amazon Prime Day 2026 runs June 23–26 — earlier than any previous year. Based on seven years of data:
Mass merchants (Target, Walmart): The counter-sale playbook is proven. Expect positive traffic during Prime Day week. Target’s improvement from -2.4% to +6.8% suggests these events are compounding — becoming anchor shopping occasions in their own right.
Value and discount (Five Below, Costco): Expect neutral to positive. Deal-seeking behaviour creates a rising tide for all value retail. Costco’s membership model makes it immune regardless.
Electronics (Best Buy): Seven years of data say the counter-sale will not drive store traffic. The strategic question is not how to run a better sale — it is how to give shoppers a reason to be in the store that the online experience cannot provide.
Home improvement (Lowe’s): Expect the largest traffic dip. The trend is worsening and the category dynamics are structural.
Department stores (Macy’s, Nordstrom): Expect flat performance. Without a signature counter-event on the scale of Circle Week, department stores see slight leakage.
Foot traffic data from PassBy’s Almanac platform. Weekly visits per store for nine national retailers, 2019–2025. Same-store analysis using active locations. Prime Day week compared to the prior non-holiday week. Data covers the full US store portfolio for each retailer. Learn more about our data methodology →
Want to see how Prime Day 2026 affects traffic to your stores — or your competitors’?