Which of the following is necessary in order for a firm to successfully practice price
discrimination?
A) The firm must practice product differentiation.
B) The demand for the firm’s product is inelastic.
C) The firm must be able to segment the market for the product.
D) The firm’s transactions costs must be zero.
Article Summary
Brandeis University economist Benjamin Shiller has written a paper which explains
how Netflix could combine demographic data with customers’ Web browsing habits to
more accurately predict how much a customer would be willing to pay for a Netflix
subscription, and how using this method of first-degree price discrimination would
generate higher profits. Shiller explains that the more information a company has about
its customers, the better it is at being able to set prices to increase profits. As he stated
in his paper, “Using all variables to tailor prices, one can yield variable profits 1.39
percent higher than variable profits obtained using non-tailored 2nd degree
price-discrimination. Using demographics alone to tailor prices raises profits by much
less, yielding variable profits only 0.14% higher than variable profits attainable under
2nd degree [price discrimination].”
Source: Brian Fung, “How Netflix could use Big Data to make twice as much money
off you,” Washington Post, September 4, 2013.
Refer to the Article Summary. The pricing method described in the article is referred to
as first-degree price discrimination. First-degree price discrimination is also known as
A) arbitrage.
B) perfect price discrimination.
C) odd pricing.
D) two-part tariff pricing.