Teaching Consumer Price Discrimination: An Interdisciplinary Case Study for Business Law Students

摘要

Most, if not all, undergraduate and graduate business students understand that firms should avoid practices that are clearly unlawful, obviously unethical, and highly unlikely to be profitable. It scarcely seems worth spending precious class time to remind students that they should avoid violating the law and applicable moral standards in pursuit of possible financial ruin. It would seem more valuable to expose business students to real-world scenarios where the legal, ethical, and practical business calculations do not clearly point to a proper course of action. Consumer price discrimination is such a topic. Although it is a pervasive, well-established, and often profitable business practice, commentators claim that price discrimination is despised and reviled as unethical by consumers. Although there is a federal law banning price discrimination, a fascinating tangle of doctrine, economic history, and public policy renders price discrimination lawful when firms practice it against most consumers. Although price discrimination is, as a matter of theory, economically beneficial and profitable for sellers, it is a costly practice that carries the ultimate risk of alienating customers and harming a firm's brand. This article provides instructors with a brief, accessible, and truly interdisciplinary case study that touches on all of these matters and more. Once instructors have the necessary tools to guide students through these economic, ethical, and legal issues, they can shape the lesson in any way they see fit and focus on those aspects of the topic that they feel would be most beneficial for their students given the nature of the course and program in which the case is used.