Amazon wants to become an even more vital part of shoppers’ lives, as it prioritizes growing sales of groceries, prescriptions and other essential products. The company said on Thursday during its second-quarter earnings results that sales of groceries and everyday essentials grew “meaningfully faster” than the rest of its Stores business. The launch of new delivery services, like Amazon Now, has been crucial to fueling the sales of essential products. Amazon Now offers delivery in 30 minutes or less on thousands of essential items
Overall, net sales came in at just over $200 billion during the second quarter, which ended on June 30. That represented a 20% year-over-year increase.
The bulk of that growth was driven by AWS, which grew 36.7% year over year, aided by the AI boom. But online Stores revenue was also up 15% year over year.
“In Stores, we again set record delivery speeds for Prime members in the first half of the year — over 40% more items delivered same-day or overnight, with Grocery and Everyday Essentials growing meaningfully faster than the rest of the business,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.
It helped that this year, Prime Day was held from June 23 to June 26. Typically, the event is held in mid-July. Holding the event at the end of June meant that Amazon got to realize the gains from Prime Day during the second quarter, rather than the third quarter.







