An Analysis of Gender-based Pricing: Personal Care Products on Amazon India

The goal of this study is to understand the pricing disparities of personal care products between women and men in India. While initially, we had hoped to research pads, tampons, and other menstrual products, there exists no male equivalent for comparison. Hence, we hope the analysis of our three chosen personal care products—deodorant, perfume, and razors—may reveal differences in gender-based pricing, providing a framework for future research on menstrual product costs. We collected 1,659 unique product URLs from Amazon India by including all search results across these three personal care products in women’s and men’s categories, counting repeat entries marketed to both genders. After identifying unisex entries and removing outliers, resulting in a total of 1,583 unique entries accounted for in our data, we compared the means to understand pricing differences. Contrary to expectations, the mean price of all three women’s product categories was lower than its respective men’s counterpart, with the percent increase in the average price for men as compared to women varying from 7.71%, 28.27%, 58.84%, for deodorant, perfume, and razors respectively.