Amazon shoppers forgo big-ticket items as Prime sale gets going

Amazon.com's fall sale for Prime subscribers kicked off Tuesday with price-conscious shoppers mostly snapping up deals on lowcost kitchen gadgets and apparel rather than splurging on big-ticket items.

Customers spent an average of $38 during the event's first eight hours, up 2% from the same period last year, according to Attain, a research firm that harvests data from credit card transactions.

While shoppers are skimping on their purchases now, Amazon is monitoring customers' browsing activity so it can offer them customized deals later in the season when they're prepared to spend more, said Brian Mandelbaum, chief executive officer of Chicago-based Attain. Other retailers looking to draft off Amazon's sale are doing much the same.

“This is a master class of how to have foresight into the consumer ahead of the season,” he said. “Each shopper will have their own symphony of offers heading into the holidays.”

Consumers are grappling with stubbornly persistent inflation even as their debt obligations balloon and savings shrink. The resumption of student loan payments, which were suspended during the pandemic, also are expected to weigh on spending. the courtroom. “He directed me to commit these crimes,” she told jurors at a federal court in New York.

In her first day of testimony, Ellison, 28, portrayed Bankman-Fried as the brains behind the company operations, who knowingly transfered over $14 billion of FTX customer funds to the sister hedge fund, directed her to ignore concerns about auditors and knowingly inflated Alameda's balance sheet to secure loans.

The two met at Jane

Street Capital and started dating on and off. She described Bankman-Fried as someone who was very interested in politics and wanted to use his money and influence. In private conversations, Bankman-Fried once told her that he calculated that he had a 5% chance of becoming the president of the U.S. one day.

Ellison's testimony was among the most highly anticipated in the fraud trial, after she pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government in the case against Bankman-Fried.