Question

A dry cleaner in California encountered controversy for charging more to dry clean women’s shirts than men’s shirts. As an unhappy female customer noted, “They charged me $1.50 for each of my husband’s shirts, and he wears an extra large. They charged $3.50 for each of mine, and I wear a small.” The store owner explained that the difference stemmed from the need to hand iron her shirts because his automatic presser was not made to handle small-sized women’s garments. Was this dry cleaner practicing price discrimination?

Answer 1

Price discrimination is charging different prices from different consumers for the same unit of product.When a seller charges different price for the same product then it can be said that there is price discrimination.

Price discrimination is possible in situations like:

When the consumer is unaware about the price of the product in different market i.e when the consumer is not known that the same product can be obtained at different price, then he may pay higher price. Some consumers think that paying higher prices is for better quality of goods ,then also discrimination is possible.

Price discrimination is also possible in case of nature of goods, like government can charge different prices for the same product on the basis of legal sanction.

Types of price discrimination

When the product is sold at different prices in different regions of a country ,then it is called as regional price discrimination

When a product or service is sold to different individuals at different prices then it is called as personal price discrimination

Price discrimination is also possible according to the units of the product.

There are many ways by which a seller performs price discrimination.It is not always important that the consumers are not aware about the discrimination.

Here we can say that the seller is performing Gender based price discrimination. Gender price discrimination is a matter of debate in many countries but it is left over to the state to take actions. In US, many states imposed policies or restrictions against gender based price discrimination.But legally it is not enforceable universally.There are many point of views as it has been said that the choices of woman with regard to men is also a mattern for price discrimination. Many women products are more standardised than women , which makes the seller charge different price for it. Like here, the store explained different steemmed from the need to hand iron shirts as automatic pressure could not handle small size garments.Although this activities of the sellers create a negative impact on the mind of the women as they have to pay higher prices with regard to men. It has always been said that the women pay more than the men .Demand of the products of women comparable to men ,Product qualtiy are also the reason for charging different prices. Although there is no legal actions with regard to this gender discrimination universally but many states takes actions against this discrimination as it can create gender inequality.