Priceline.com founder Jay Walker is moving into a new consumer-names-his-own-price venture online, this time selling groceries at a discount of up to 50%.
At the conference, Walker showed television and radio ads about to air in the New York metropolitan area. The ads feature William Shatner declaring jubilantly: “First airline tickets–now, groceries!” In the TV spots, the former Starship Enterprise captain demonstrates a visit to the Priceline site where he chooses the price of ketchup, French fries and other supermarket fare; prints out the results; and picks up his groceries at his local supermarket.
Walker’s prediction, after showing the ads to the packed-to-the-rafters crowd: “If we can price soda and French fries…that probably tells you how dramatic the [Net] is going to be.”
The grocery endeavor, Walker told an audience appearing rather stunned at the DM visionary’s latest brainstorm, is a natural extension of the way groceries are priced now, with consumers paying different prices depending on whether they have a coupon or belong to a warehouse club, for example. For groceries, he said–as Priceline.com has proved with airline tickets–“price fixing is almost dead.”
Because of the control the Internet affords the consumer, marketers will soon be grappling over “a choice between giving a better price or losing a customer.”
As for the company’s flagship venture, its doing just fine, thank you. Walker said Priceline sells 2% of all leisure airline tickets per day.
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