Abstract

Gender-based price discrimination occurs products marketed to women tend be be more expensive than those marketed to men. There is more social pressure on women regarding their appearance and women on average send more on personal care products than men. As consumers we are aware of certain types of price discrimination, however differential pricing in personal care products is often overlooked or explained away by consumers. I aim to test my hypothesis that will be more aware of gender-based price discrimination than men and that women have a lower elasticity of demand than men and will gain a higher utility from purchasing personal care products as a result from facing greater external pressures on their physical appearance than men. I will use an experimental survey approach which aims to reveal the differences in willingness to pat and probability of purchase for shampoos between genders and whether this is influenced by external pressure on physical appearance. The results show that women have higher demand, utility and probability for personal care products than men, especially those of a higher quality. However, female consumers do not have inelastic demand for personal care products.

Advisor

Long, Melanie

Department

Economics

Keywords

consumer behavior, gender-based price discrimination, price discrimination

Publication Date

2021

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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