Amazon's Prime Day benefits brick-and-mortar retail as well, a new study shows. This year, Prime Day—October 13 and 14—drove offline visits, according to data from Placer.ai. The activity illustrates how general excitement around a retail event can benefit sales both online and offline.

During the two-day event, Walmart, Target, Whole Foods and Best Buy all saw a significant improvement in visits compared to the six-week average preceding Prime Day. Best Buy had the most impressive increase in visits, up 21.7% year-over-year during the Prime Day event. Target also saw a significant jump in visits, up 7% year-over-year. These retailers aligned with the event by launching special deals to help drive business and compete with Amazon.

While offline retailers experienced a surge in visits compared to the prior six weeks, visits were down when comparing to other Prime Day events. One reason for this is that Prime Day was July 15 and 16 in 2019, and retailers had more time to prepare for offline sales. In addition, the summer period of 2019 was a strong time for retail sales. This year, Target visits were down 15.9%; Walmart visits were 19.1%, and Best Buy visits were down 11.6% compared to Prime Day in 2019. With the pandemic and the change in Prime Day dates, comparing the two years in terms of visits was especially challenging, according to Placer.ai.