Priceline.com founder Jay Walker is moving into a new consumer-names-his-own-price venture online, this time selling groceries.
During a luncheon presentation at the Direct Marketing Association’s annual convention last month, 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 Priceline’s site, where he chooses the price of ketchup, French fries and other supermarket fare, prints out the results and picks up the 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.”
This latest 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 consumers, marketers will soon be grappling over “a choice between giving a better price or losing a customer.”
As for the company’s flagship venture, it’s doing just fine, thank you. Walker said Priceline sells 2% of all leisure airline tickets per day.
Network
