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Ladies First? A Field Study of Discrimination in Coffee Shops

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  • Caitlin Knowles Myers with assistance of Marcus bellows, Hiba Fakhoury, Douglas Hale, Alexander Hall, and Kaitlin Ofman*

Abstract

Despite anecdotal and survey evidence suggesting the presence of discrimination against customers in stores, restaurants and other small-transaction consumer markets, few studies exist that identify or quantify the nature of any unequal treatment. We provide evidence from a field study of wait times in Boston-area coffee shops that suggests that female customers wait an average of 20 seconds longer for their orders than do male customers even when controlling for gender differences in orders. We find that this differential in wait times is inverse to the proportion of employees who are female and directly related to how busy the coffee shop is at the time of the order. This supports the conclusion that the observed differential is driven at least in part by employee animus and/or statistical discrimination rather than unobserved heterogeneity in the purchasing behaviour of female customers.
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Suggested Citation

  • Caitlin Knowles Myers with assistance of Marcus bellows, Hiba Fakhoury, Douglas Hale, Alexander Hall, and Kaitlin Ofman*, 2007. "Ladies First? A Field Study of Discrimination in Coffee Shops," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0711, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mdl:mdlpap:0711
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sexism at Starbucks
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2007-10-08 20:04:47

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    Cited by:

    1. Hill Cummings, Krista & Seitchik, Allison E., 2020. "The differential treatment of women during service recovery: How perceived social power affects consumers’ postfailure compensation," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 63(5), pages 647-658.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    economics of gender and minorities; consumer and market discrimination;

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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