Question

A dry cleaner in California encountered controversy for charging more to dry clean women’s shirts than men’s shirts. As an unhappy female customer noted, “They charged me $1.50 for each of my husband’s shirts, and he wears an extra-large. They charged $3.50 for each of mine, and I wear a small.” The store owner explained that the difference stemmed from the need to hand iron her shirts because his automatic presser was not made to handle small-sized women’s garments. Was this dry cleaner practicing price discrimination?

Answer 1

NO, price discrimination is a situation when the firm is charging different price for the goods and providing the same services in the market, for example a flight service charging different price to the consumer who booked there tickets at different times. or a movie theatre charging different price for children and adults.  

Here, the dry cleaner is charging an extra price for the hand ironing services that they are providing along with the cleaning services. So this will not be considered as price discrimination. as he has to put in extra resources for ironing women clothes.