Does everyone have a price? Understanding people’s attitude towards online and offline price discrimination

Online shops can offer each website customer a different price. Such personalised pricing can lead to advanced forms of price discrimination based on individual characteristics – or assumed characteristics – of consumers. Shops can categorise consumers as price-sensitive or price-insensitive, and charge (presumed) price-insensitive people higher prices. In this paper, we analyse results from two consumer surveys conducted in the Netherlands, among a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 1222 and N=1202). We analyse consumer attitudes towards different sorts of price discrimination to gain a better understanding of the drivers of people’s acceptance or rejection of price discrimination in different settings, and of the economic and demographic factors underlying people’s attitudes. To interpret the outcomes, we draw on insights from behavioural economics on the perceived fairness in transactions.