 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
              
|
Thursday, October 12, 2000
Not every business model can be used on the Internet to make money. Take Priceline. It has been successful with its patented "name your own price" strategy in airline tickets, but had to throw in the towel trying to use the concept on groceries (and gasoline). It seems that the company could not get cooperation from vendors in the grocery industry -- the type of cooperation needed to create discounts deep enough to entice grocery shoppers. So the company resorted to subsidizing purchases to create the discounts.
That's fine as a marketing strategy as long as the cost of such subsidies are built into the company's business model, and the management can justify them based upon the revenue to cost ratio changing substantially over time. However, the ratio didn't change enough for Priceline. What seemed to work with high-margin, high-priced airline tickets didn't work with food products.
Or at least, with the amount of funding available, it didn't give the company enough time to make it work.
That's not to say that it was a complete failure.
The Internet is being built by creative business people applying new spins on old processes. Most often they apply Internet techniques to traditional models. In this case, Priceline chief Jay Walker applied a new product set to an existing Internet technique. So it didn't work -- this time.
Have a question for David Radin? Contact him at his Web site
My bet is that it will work -- if not by Priceline today, maybe later after the grocery suppliers decide they are willing to compete on the Web against traditional grocery stores; or maybe by some other company who can apply yet another spin. Don't be surprised if you're buying groceries on the Web again -- by naming your own price, or by taking advantage of a deeply discounted price offered by somebody new.
Q: Somebody in our office managed to make the menu bar in MS-Word disappear. How do I get it back?
A: I spent some time trying to remove my menu from my copy of MS-Word to simulate your problem. Try as I might, Word did not allow me to turn it off. However, it did allow me to change the menu by removing menu options, and it did allow me to undock the menu. This said, here are a couple possible solutions.
Perhaps the perpetrator removed all your options from your menu, thereby making it look like the menu no longer exists. To restore your previous menu, right click on the blank bar that is located at the top of your screen where the menu should be.
From the pop-up menu that appears, click on [Customize...]. This will pop up a dialog box with a large selection of toolbars. If "Menu Bar" is not checked off, click on it so a check appears in the box next to it. If this doesn't work, highlight "Menu Bar" with your mouse; then click on the button labeled [Reset...]. When asked, tell it to reset it to "Normal.dot".
If the solutions listed above don't work, try replacing your Normal.dot. Normal.dot is the default template that MS-Word uses anytime you want a blank page. It also holds many of your preferences including your toolbar preferences.
The best way to replace it is to find Normal.dot on your disk and delete it -- or even better, rename it (so you can get it back later if you need it). Do this when MS-Word is closed. The next time you start Word, it will look for Normal.dot, not find it, then create a new one to replace it. With some luck, it will restore your menu in the new Normal.dot.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
