agree/disagree and why?

blog: https://managerialecon.blogspot.com/2016/11/posts-on-price-discrimination.html

answer: The first of the two blogs I chose wasWhy do Women pay More?, by Michael Ward. In a brief overview, the NCY department on Consumer Affairs found that items that were the same were priced differently. The items noted in post were kids scooters and shaving razors, and on both cases women paid more. Before even reading the possible explanations, I thought about why this could be. How can a company justify its pricing structure this way? Initially I thought it might have something to do with 'extras' on girl items. Maybe there's some flower design on the pink scooter, or special smoothing lotion in the women's razors. In the case of the razors, the blog notes that women may be at an informational disadvantage, which I disagree with, but that's another topic. This be a direct pricing discrimination, as the companies have identified two separate groups, and "identify different customer groups with different elasticities" (Froeb, 2014, p. 166).You could also argue that, like my original thought, the razors use an indirect price discrimination. As the text states regarding indirect discrimination, one must recognize "some feature that is correlated with value (Froeb, 2014, p.172). in the picture of the razors the 'silk' feature is emphasized because of course women want a hydrating razor to give them extra smooth skin.

In the second article I reviewed,How Victoria's Secret discriminates against men, I found the quotes in the blog to be a bit funny and true. The first quotes can be seen as a parallel to the first article, in that the consumer (men) is at an informational disadvantage. They have no idea what items to look for and because of the brand name, value is associated. Price discriminate says that lower prices should be targeted to low-value customers, and high-value customers should be charged higher prices (Froeb, 2014, p.165). While I do not think women, in relation to Victoria's Secret, are low-value customer because they are the huge majority of customer base, the company does not need to sacrifice pitching sales to men who go in buying blindly. They also will not expect men to go in with coupons like women do. Men should start to realize that they are the 'shmucks' paying the full retail price because of their low-elasticity (Froeb, 2014, p.169). (Alixzandra Pena)