Profile:
Priceline.com has a unique selling strategy for this etailing site. Priceline gives consumers a chance to save money on various products and gives merchants the opportunity to create some extra revenue. The consumer names his price for a specific good or service and a merchant or company can accept the offer-- it's more or less a reversed auction. Priceline itself calls it a "demand collection system". For instance, if you want an airline ticket from Seattle to Amsterdam on December 20th you can name your price and maybe an airline will have a seat available for that price. Priceline will then immediately buy the ticket for you at that price and you have to pay Priceline back to get the ticket. Just as with eBay, Priceline gets money from both the buyer and seller. Priceline specializes in airline tickets, car and hotel reservations. New is the possibility to "name your price" for mortgages and groceries.

Started: (April 1998 first "auction")
IPO: 30 March 1999

Priceline.com on the Web:
main page: http://www.priceline.com
investor relations: click here
current stock price: click here

Competitors:

• Other Travel sites such as Travelocity/Preview Travel, MS Expedia

• Other car sites such as Autobytel, Autoweb

Propus personal view:
They've put a relatively new marketing strategy at work, one that wouldn't exist without the Net. The concept is exceptional, but the so-called barrier of (market)entrance is very low, so competitors can easily copy the concept. Priceline's main target should be to get more of a brand name, like eBay and OnSale already have.