How much is your information worth? In an era where privacy concerns still matter, would you exchange details about your personal hygiene—or, for that matter, how many trash bags or sponges you use—if Alice.com guaranteed that you would get better prices, never run out, and never have to shop for them again? As it turns out, millions of people would. Among them are lots of mothers who trade information for free, reliable deliveries of items like diapers, and senior citizens who can stop worrying about schlepping to the supermarket for supplies in bad weather. Instead they can count on Alice.com for any of six thousand different products made by 125 manufacturers.
The president and co-founder of Alice, Mark McGuire, spent years developing the idea, only to have it debut at the height of the Great Recession. Actually, conditions worked in his favor. Customers under time pressure, who wanted to reduce their trips to the store, were drawn by the convenience. Cost sensitive shoppers discovered they could get goods delivered free by Alice at roughly the same price they would pay at a store. And when they stay out of the store they are less likely to grab impulse items. “They’re trying to do things like plan their shopping lists and limit impulse purchases or save as much money as they can by comparing one price of a brand that they typically get to all the other brands they could substitute that for,” McGuire says. “Doing that online and through Alice is great. Also, you get automatic coupons with us. There are a lot of retailers, the Walmarts and the Targets of the world, they’ve done a tremendous job and they’re incredibly skilled at getting me in the store to buy a bottle of laundry detergent and walk out with three other things that I didn’t think I needed.” However, in the new economy, “People are very much focused on their basic essentials and getting rid of those extraneous purchases,” adds McGuire. For these folks, “Alice has had perfect timing.”
(read more of my interview with Mark McGuire at PSFK
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