Consumer Protection Governance in Gendered Markets: Appearance Pressure, Consumer Awareness, and Gender-Differentiated Pricing in the Chandigarh–Mohali–Panchkula Tricity, India

Gender-differentiated pricing, commonly termed the "Pink Tax," describes situations in which comparable products or services are priced differently by gender. While prior research has documented such price differences, less is known about the behavioral mechanisms shaping how consumers experience them. Drawing on the Political Economy of Beauty and consumer protection governance frameworks, this study examines how appearance pressure, gendered consumption behavior, and consumer awareness and price comparison behavior relate to experienced gender-differentiated pricing among 151 consumers surveyed in the Chandigarh–Mohali–Panchkula tricity, India. Using exploratory factor analysis, correlation, and multiple regression, the results indicate that appearance pressure (β = .407, p < .001) and consumer awareness and price comparison behavior (β = .320, p < .001) significantly predicted experienced gender-differentiated pricing, while gendered consumption behavior did not (β = .128, p = .120), together explaining 44.6% of the variance. These findings suggest that consumers' experiences of differential pricing are shaped more by social expectations around appearance and price awareness than by purchasing behavior alone. Robustness checks (Harman's single-factor test, variance inflation factors, and bootstrapped confidence intervals) support the stability of these results. Given the study's convenience sample and cross-sectional design, findings are presented as exploratory rather than generalizable, with implications framed as hypotheses for future regulatory attention rather than settled policy prescriptions. The study contributes an interdisciplinary behavioral perspective to consumer protection governance research in the Indian context.