The Ethics of Price Discrimination

Business Ethics Quarterly 21 (4):633-660 (2011)
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Abstract

Price discrimination is the practice of charging different customers different prices for the same product. Many people consider price discrimination unfair, but economists argue that in many cases price discrimination is more likely to lead to greater welfare than is the uniform pricing alternative—sometimes for every party in the transaction. This article shows i) that there are many situations in which it is necessary to engage in differential pricing in order to make the provision of a product possible; and ii) that in many such situations, the seller does not obtain an above-average rate of return. It concludes that price discrimination is not inherently unfair. The article also contends that even when conditions i) and/or ii) do not obtain, price discrimination is not necessarily unethical. In itself, the fact that some people get an even better deal than do others does not entail that the latter are wronged.

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Citations of this work

Big Data and Personalized Pricing.Etye Steinberg - 2019 - Business Ethics Quarterly 30 (1):97-117.
The Just Price as the Price Obtainable in an Open Market.Juan M. Elegido - 2015 - Journal of Business Ethics 130 (3):557-572.
Business Ethics.Jeffrey Moriarty - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Why online personalized pricing is unfair.Jeffrey Moriarty - 2021 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (3):495-503.

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What is the point of equality.Elizabeth Anderson - 1999 - Ethics 109 (2):287-337.
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