Gender-Based Pricing in Consumer Packaged Goods: A Pink Tax? | Hacker News Reader

Gender-Based Pricing in Consumer Packaged Goods: A Pink Tax?

papers.ssrn.com

18 pointsoldschoolib30 comments

Why is this pricing surprising (or bad)? Certain groups of people pay more (or less) for certain products, and the market reflects that.

The alternative being proposed sounds much worse: price control (based on ingredients?)? Not all products are mere sums of their parts, and some people prefer the premium experience regardless of the differences.

They aren't literally charging based on gender - but different brands targeted towards different genders offer different prices and experiences. If the products really are that similar, the other gender can buy the other gender's product no problem.

exactly lol. i had a friend point this out when we were at a Walgreens or CVS or somewhere a while back except the pink one was a gillette (expensive name brand) and the man's was a BIC (a cheap brand). or sometimes the pink one has more blades or whatever.

regardless, there's literally nothing that would prevent a woman from buying the "man" version. i would buy the pink one if it was cheaper without thinking twice.

no idea about the deoderant side though, obviously men/women want different smells on that. i wonder if it might have to do with women wanting more "exotic"/complex smells where men care less, or wanting a broader variety.

here's the other interesting question it presents: are women (for some reason) less price elastic on some things? something like deoderant is a widely available commodity product so companies magically finding some way to make women only pay more (but not men) would be surprising.

I switched to the old safety razors. A handle/stand/brush was maybe $30 and a 100 pack of blades was about $10. This was several years ago and I'm still on that same 100 pack.

I did this about a decade ago at this point and I spend maybe $50 a year on a new tub of soap and a pack of razors. I replaced the brush a year or two ago. If you spend a good amount of money up front on quality shaving gear, you save in the long run.

The "Gillete" products are just a scam, we should all be shaving like our grandfathers did.

Did the same on the recommendation of a local merchant who sells soap and sundries while picking up some goods couldn't be happier.

Me too, but I also discovered better quality blades (which are still cheap compared to multi-blade) and now I only have that ~80 pack because I can’t bring myself to throw it away.

> are women (for some reason) less price elastic on some things?

It would seem so. There'd be no "pink tax" otherwise.

Based on the abstract, it sounds like these are basically the points they're making. The title seems to be a little unclear or editorial to me though.

You're right, they are. I misread the last sentence in the abstract.

It seems the authors did not find evidence of a "pink tax":

"Finally, while our findings do NOT support the existence of a pink tax as conceived by regulators, a more expansive definition of the pink tax could include differences in markups across men’s and women’s products."

"...our finding that women’s personal care products are not systematically more expensive than substantially similar men’s products calls into question the role of government intervention to reduce the pink tax."

All of us who have shelled out ~$40 bucks for a pack of replacement blades for their Mach 3 knew this was true without a study.

> It seems the authors did not find evidence of a "pink tax"

Other studies have. The Wikipedia article is a better "big picture" view of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-based_price_discriminat...

> Our results call into question the need for and efficacy of recently proposed and enacted legislation mandating price parity across gendered products.

When equality would benefit men then suddenly it's questionable?

That is a very weird takeaway from this paper...

The paper literally reaches the opposite conclusion to what you just said.

In any case, any sort of price control is bad for the consumer, so I'm opposed to the idea on principle.

The price difference found was 0.05% in products with substantially similar key ingredients. Regardless of the sign of that 0.05%, that makes me think that the market has sorted this out.

The complete context:

> For categories with ingredients data, the average pink gap is slightly larger, at 15.0%. However, when we condition on formulation, unit prices for women’s products are on average 0.05% less expensive per unit.

This is saying that when you control for formulation, for the ingredients, the gap is 0.05%. For similar products, which is oddly shoved into an numbered footnote,

> a comparison of products with comparable formulations, women’s products are 2.6% less expensive.

Pretty much. Yet more institutional sexism against men.

Their research suggests that the market already effectively prevents the form of price discrimination targeted by legislation--so-called third degree price discrimination. On balance, third degree price discrimination disfavors men, but only by 0.05%. Whereas so-called second degree price discrimination disfavors women by 11%. However, in second degree price discrimination there are often actual, substantive differences in the product, for example additional ingredients like moisturizers, so the "discrimination" is at least partly rooted in costs and preferences.

There are still areas where women see problematic price discrimination, such as at car dealerships. (First degree price discrimination?) The crux of their argument is that the best way to deal with that, if at all, is through more transparent pricing as according to their research women are capable (en masse) of forcing fairer pricing when they can more easily comparison shop.

Why's it called the "Pink Tax" when it looks like the woman's variants are cheaper more often than not? I suppose "Blue Tax" sounds like it's related to cops.

I think it's implying that this legislation would be "taxing" womens' goods to bring them to parity.

I do like "The Pink Subsidy" better though.

Because the conventional wisdom has been that the women’s products are more expensive.

Breaking news: people of different genders have different preferences about price/quality tradeoffs in their shampoo and razors.

Why is this surprising at all? Also, why is this discrimination?

Seriously, my wife and I both like high quality grooming products. She uses men's razors, because they tend to give a better shave per dollar, and I use a brand of shampoo targeted at women after two past brands of high-quality men's shampoo have gone out of business due to lack of demand.

Did they include "ladies nights" in their analysis?

>In an apples-to-apples comparison of women’s and men’s products with similar ingredients, however, we do not find evidence of a systematic price premium for women’s goods: price differences are small, and the women’s variant is less expensive in three out of five categories. Our findings are consistent with the ease of arbitrage in posted price markets where consumer packaged goods are sold. These results call into question the need for and efficacy of recently proposed and enacted pink tax legislation, which mandates price parity for substantially similar gendered products.

Later in the paper, they note that the 11% "pink tax" is actually primarily explained by differences in consumer preference. The supposedly really egregious one is razors, but women's razors aren't comparable products - they are significantly wider (which makes sense - we have more surface area to cover). This more or less matches with my life experience.

Not that women don't have gender specific consumer rights issues. But the real pink tax, I'd argue, is that tampons and pads are taxed as non-essential goods. That also has a much easier regulatory solution.

From the abstract:

> We find that women’s products are more expensive in some categories (e.g., deodorant) but less expensive in others (e.g., razors).

I have yet to read the complete article but it looks like female razors are actually less expensive, despite being significantly wider according to your experience. We should start a nationwide campaign for male consumer rights equality, quick !

Toilet paper is taxed also as a non essential.

> These results call into question the need for and efficacy of recently proposed and enacted pink tax legislation, which mandates price parity for substantially similar gendered products.

These results sustain the question on price parity. The only thing into question is the "pink tax" moniker. It should be blue tax I guess (in the 20-21st century times anyways)?

Ignore genderedness when shopping and save money. I bought oversized women's snowpants for $18 discontinued vs. $210 in men's. It wasn't a tough decision. They weren't designed gendered being beige and baggy. If "girl colors" or "boy colors" bothers someone, there's always dye and paint.

If women's razors cost more than men's or generics, the rational decision is to skip pink.

I noticed two trail mixes recently which were labeled “womens vitality mix” and “mens vitality mix”.

The womens option was $.50 more expensive, but now I wish I would have checked the ingredients to see the differences, if any.

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