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Comment by cbreynoldson | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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