Why So Much Coverage Of Amazon Prime Day? The Incentives, Of Course (theguardian.com)

Olivia Solon, writing for The Guardian: In July 2015, Amazon declared its own annual holiday: Amazon Prime Day. The retail giant promised deals on a wide range of products for customers signed up to its membership program, Amazon Prime. This is the second Amazon Prime Day, and it's pretty hard to miss. At the time of writing, the #PrimeDay hashtag was one of Twitter's top 10 worldwide trends. Media outlets including the Daily Mail, USA Today, the Telegraph, PC World and CNet are publishing numerous stories about the discounts on offer, and urging readers to sign up for an Amazon Prime trial. What many of those readers won't realise is that publishers are financially incentivised by Amazon to write about Prime Day. By signing up to the retail giant's affiliate programme, Amazon Associates, publishers can earn commissions from linking to products on Amazon.com.In some other news, Amazon announced on Wednesday that the self-created holiday was its biggest sales day ever, with worldwide orders rising more than 60% compared with the previous Prime Day.

Comments

Price matching.

[MightyYar]

They have changed their price matching policy since last year. Last year they would refund you the difference between what you paid a few days before and the Prime Day price. This year you have to order it again and then send it back. Stupid, but I guess the more hoops they make you jump through, the less refunds they have to issue.

Re: "incentivized"

[Anonymous Coward]

All words are made up in some sense, and some more than others, even some in common and current usage.

Re:"incentivized"

[mrchaotica]

When you incite it's an imperative.

No it isn't. An "imperative" comes from a third Latin root word, impero, meaning to command or give an order. (That's also where we get the word "emperor," via "imperator" meaning "one who gives orders".)