Black Friday 'Countdown' Event Keys Amazon's Holiday Season Launch

Amazon's official launch to the holiday shopping season kicks off Saturday with a Countdown to Black Friday Deals Week event. Counting down to Black Friday, Amazon will offer "more deals, all day, every day," it said Thursday. Overall during the holiday season, Amazon will offer more than 15,000 Lightning Deals, it said, including new early access deals for Prime members. Amazon’s spin-off site, MyHabit, will feature daily sales events for fashion and lifestyle brands, it said, and Nov. 1 to Dec. 22, Amazon will offer two Deals of the Day in addition to the Lightning Deals. An upcoming electronics deal Amazon highlighted is $150 off the Canon EOS Rebel T5i digital SLR camera. A designated area has been set aside for Amazon Black Friday sales, it said. In addition to its own Kindle and Fire TV products, Amazon cited electronics including the LeapFrog LeapBand, VTech Kidizoom, Samsung Galaxy Gear, Bose SoundLink Mini speaker and the Misfit Shine as target gift items for the season. The e-tailer outlined mobile shopping trends, saying more than half of Amazon customers shopped using a mobile device last year. Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon customers ordered more than five toys per second from a mobile device, it said. Amazon’s shopping app enables customers to shop for a product via voice or visual scan to speed up the shopping cycle, it said. Amazon's goal is for consumers to go from “I want that” to “I bought that” in less than 30 seconds. A new social media tie-in allows customers to view a tweet from a favorite artist, brand or friend with an embedded product link and then add #Amazoncart or #Amazonwishlist to the reply to have the product automatically added to their Amazon cart or wish list, the company said.