Priceline was an early e-commerce company that changed the traditional seller-buyer model by allowing buyers to name their maximum price for a product. It found instant success online by using celebrity endorsements and incentives on affiliated websites. The company's model of buyers naming their price was easily scalable to other industries and was later copied by competitors like Expedia, though Priceline risked losing customers without strategies to educate buyers and maintain customer relationships.

1. By Yu-Chen Hsu

2. changing the conventional marketing system
by introducing a role reversal of the
traditional seller-buyer system.
the first company gave the buyer the power
to name the maximum price he/she could
afford.

3. Priceline defied conventional wisdom by
hiring a celebrity to market its web-based
services.
sweepstakes and incentives offered to
affiliated websites helped increase the
number of visitors to the website.

4. experienced instantaneous success in the
Internet community, and reached its $1MM in
just over a year of its inception.
Their model was horizontally scalable as well,
and so lent it to businesses such as groceries,
car rentals, and long distance telephone
systems.

5. Expedia copied Priceline's model.
losing their customer.

6.  focus on "time-sensitive" goods such as
hotel rooms, airline tickets, car rentals etc.
the company needs to find ways to educate
the target market about their offerings.
 Customer relationships.
“try it for free”.