Quality Cuts Deeper: Why Quality Discrimination Feels More Unfair than Price Discrimination

Although people believe that all consumers should receive the same product at the same price, both price discrimination (i.e., charging different prices for the same product to different customers) and quality discrimination (i.e., offering products of different quality to different customers) are prevalent in the marketplace. This research explores how consumers perceive the fairness of price discrimination versus quality discrimination when they are discriminated against. Across eight experiments, we provide robust evidence that consumers perceive quality discrimination as less fair than price discrimination. This effect occurs because quality (vs. price) discrimination triggers a stronger sense of self-threat. Moreover, we find that quality discrimination is less magnitude sensitive than price discrimination. We further show that the difference between quality versus price discrimination is attenuated: 1) among consumers with high self-focused attention, and 2) when the discrimination is attributed to self-irrelevant causes.