If you feel like Amazon (AMZN -0.24%) just held a Prime Day event, you're not wrong. It was a little over two months ago when the company hosted its last Prime Day sale. But get ready: Another two-day special shopping event it's calling "Prime Big Deal Days" will start on Oct. 10 -- more than a month before Black Friday weekend.  

Mimicking the October timing of the company's "Prime Early Access Sale" last year, Amazon promises the member-only shopping event will feature deep discounts, with new deals dropping as frequently as every five minutes during some periods of the sale. Further, Amazon is encouraging members to get engaged with the event by signing up for access to invite-only lists for special deals on some products.

Prime Day events drive sales growth

Last year's Oct. 11 and Oct. 12 Prime Early Access Sale was a first. Its debut signaled that inventory conditions were improving, and retailers were looking for creative ways to discount products and ultimately incentivize sales.

While there's no guarantee this year's October event will be the catalyst needed to drive Amazon's fourth-quarter sales high enough to impress investors, it's still good to see the company promoting a sales event. It suggests the days of shortages and major supply chain disruptions are fading into the rear-view mirror. 

The e-commerce king's sales events are usually major revenue drivers. Indeed, the company said its Prime Day event in July featured its largest first-day sales ever for the shopping event. And Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky boasted on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call that last year's Prime Early Access Sale outperformed management's expectations. 

Overall, there's enough evidence to suggest a sales event can move the needle for the company. Of course, Amazon's fourth quarter will be going up against a prior-year quarter that similarly featured a major sales event in October.

Looking ahead

Amazon's revenue growth has been accelerating in recent quarters, albeit slowly. After revenue grew by 8.5% year over year in Q4 2022, it increased 9.4% in Q1 2023 and 10.8% in Q2. This was helped by meaningful acceleration in the company's e-commerce segment, where sales growth improved from 2% in Q4 2022 to 3% and 5% growth in Q1 and Q2 2023, respectively. 

Analysts are expecting Amazon's acceleration in top-line growth to persist in the second half of the year. On average, they anticipate revenue will increase by 11.4% in Q3 and 11.6% in Q4. 

Considering how these sales events generally perform for Amazon, the consensus forecast for fourth-quarter revenue could prove to be conservative -- especially when you consider that the company is already demonstrating a trend of accelerating growth this year.

So, should investors buy the stock ahead of the shopping event? The event itself is arguably not a game-changer for the long-term view of the stock -- particularly since there was a similar event in the year-ago quarter. Investors, therefore, should only buy the stock if they already believed shares were undervalued before this event was announced. But the company's accelerating top-line trends ahead of the holiday quarter do look promising -- and Amazon's Prime Big Deal Day event will likely help this trend continue.