Companies and organizations in the United States spend billions of dollars to acquire and manage data on consumers such as credit information and transaction histories. Well-off consumers obviously hold great attraction to marketers because they have greater buying potential. Today companies have the ability if they choose to offer a more attractive deal to higher-value customers to win their business. The flip side of this process is that potentially they can discriminate against low-income people who won’t qualify for lower prices. And in most cases companies don’t permit consumers to access their database to learn what they know about them.117 Is it fair to stratify consumers in this way so that some get access to more attractive options than others?

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