IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/indorg/v63y2019icp69-98.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Price discrimination by language: Field experimental evidence from a shopping mall

Author

Listed:
  • Lee, Jungmin
  • Park, Sangkon

Abstract

To investigate whether foreign shoppers are discriminated against, we conduct a field experiment at a large shopping mall. We employ 56 female foreigners speaking 11 different languages and 7 Korean natives and collect data on total 2267 store visits. To test price discrimination based on differential search costs, we randomly select buyers to send a signal of lower search cost. Results show that negotiation and signaling induce sellers to lower their price offers. Our experimental findings, combined with auxiliary survey data from foreign visitors, suggest that sellers use the language of buyers as a proxy for the distribution of reservation values.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee, Jungmin & Park, Sangkon, 2019. "Price discrimination by language: Field experimental evidence from a shopping mall," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 69-98.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:63:y:2019:i:c:p:69-98
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2018.07.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718718300675
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2018.07.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stigler, George J., 2011. "Economics of Information," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 35-49.
    2. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-659, September.
    3. John Knowles & Nicola Persico & Petra Todd, 2001. "Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(1), pages 203-232, February.
    4. Loukas Balafoutas & Adrian Beck & Rudolf Kerschbamer & Matthias Sutter, 2013. "What Drives Taxi Drivers? A Field Experiment on Fraud in a Market for Credence Goods," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(3), pages 876-891.
    5. John Yinger, 1998. "Evidence on Discrimination in Consumer Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 23-40, Spring.
    6. Castillo, Marco & Petrie, Ragan & Torero, Maximo & Vesterlund, Lise, 2013. "Gender differences in bargaining outcomes: A field experiment on discrimination," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 35-48.
    7. P. A. Riach & J. Rich, 2002. "Field Experiments of Discrimination in the Market Place," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(483), pages 480-518, November.
    8. Michael Ewens & Bryan Tomlin & Liang Choon Wang, 2014. "Statistical Discrimination or Prejudice? A Large Sample Field Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(1), pages 119-134, March.
    9. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    10. Devin G. Pope & Justin R. Sydnor, 2011. "What’s in a Picture?: Evidence of Discrimination from Prosper.com," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 46(1), pages 53-92.
    11. Zhao, Bo & Ondrich, Jan & Yinger, John, 2006. "Why do real estate brokers continue to discriminate? Evidence from the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 394-419, May.
    12. John A. List, 2004. "The Nature and Extent of Discrimination in the Marketplace: Evidence from the Field," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 49-89.
    13. Ayres, Ian & Siegelman, Peter, 1995. "Race and Gender Discrimination in Bargaining for a New Car," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 304-321, June.
    14. Kathryn Graddy, 1995. "Testing for Imperfect Competition at the Fulton Fish Market," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(1), pages 75-92, Spring.
    15. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
    16. Shamena Anwar & Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2012. "The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 1017-1055.
    17. Yinger, John, 1986. "Measuring Racial Discrimination with Fair Housing Audits: Caught in the Act," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 881-893, December.
    18. Phelps, Edmund S, 1972. "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 659-661, September.
    19. Dennis J. Aigner & Glen G. Cain, 1977. "Statistical Theories of Discrimination in Labor Markets," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 30(2), pages 175-187, January.
    20. Preyas S. Desai & Devavrat Purohit, 2004. "“Let Me Talk to My Manager”: Haggling in a Competitive Environment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(2), pages 219-233, August.
    21. Benjamin Edelman & Micahel Luca, 2014. "Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com," Harvard Business School Working Papers 14-054, Harvard Business School.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlsson, Magnus & Fumarco, Luca & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2013. "Artifactual Evidence of Discrimination in Correspondence Studies? A Replication of the Neumark Method," IZA Discussion Papers 7619, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Siddique, Abu & Vlassopoulos, Michael & Zenou, Yves, 2023. "Market competition and discrimination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    3. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo, 2016. "Field Experiments on Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 22014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo, 2016. "Field Experiments on Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 22014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Filip Matejka, 2013. "Attention Discrimination: Theory and Field Experiments," 2013 Meeting Papers 798, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. List John A., 2007. "Field Experiments: A Bridge between Lab and Naturally Occurring Data," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 1-47, April.
    7. Morten Størling Hedegaard & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2018. "The Price of Prejudice," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 40-63, January.
    8. Mujcic, Redzo & Frijters, Paul, 2013. "Still Not Allowed on the Bus: It Matters If You're Black or White!," IZA Discussion Papers 7300, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Brit Grosskopf & Graeme Pearce, 2020. "Do You Mind Me Paying Less? Measuring Other-Regarding Preferences in the Market for Taxis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(11), pages 5059-5074, November.
    10. Auspurg, Katrin & Hinz, Thomas & Schmid, Laura, 2017. "Contexts and conditions of ethnic discrimination: Evidence from a field experiment in a German housing market," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 26-36.
    11. Carlsson, Magnus & Eriksson, Stefan, 2014. "Discrimination in the rental market for apartments," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 41-54.
    12. Flage, Alexandre, 2018. "Ethnic and gender discrimination in the rental housing market: Evidence from a meta-analysis of correspondence tests, 2006–2017," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 251-273.
    13. J. Aislinn Bohren & Alex Imas & Michael Rosenberg, 2019. "The Dynamics of Discrimination: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(10), pages 3395-3436, October.
    14. Huailu Li & Kevin Lang & Kaiwen Leong, 2018. "Does Competition Eliminate Discrimination? Evidence from the Commercial Sex Market in Singapore," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(611), pages 1570-1608, June.
    15. Andrew Hanson & Zackary Hawley, 2023. "Restricted access: Real estate agent response to client race, ethnicity, gender, and side of market," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 51(4), pages 855-890, July.
    16. Hanson, Andrew & Hawley, Zackary & Martin, Hal & Liu, Bo, 2016. "Discrimination in mortgage lending: Evidence from a correspondence experiment," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 48-65.
    17. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. & Devah Pager & Jörg L. Spenkuch, 2013. "Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 633-689.
    18. Castillo, Marco & Petrie, Ragan, 2010. "Discrimination in the lab: Does information trump appearance?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 50-59, January.
    19. Brian Rubineau & Yoon Kang, 2012. "Bias in White: A Longitudinal Natural Experiment Measuring Changes in Discrimination," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 660-677, April.
    20. Michael Ewens & Bryan Tomlin & Liang Choon Wang, 2014. "Statistical Discrimination or Prejudice? A Large Sample Field Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(1), pages 119-134, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Price discrimination; Language; Price negotiation; Haggling; Signaling; Willingness to pay; Field experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:63:y:2019:i:c:p:69-98. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505551 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.