Blog
Unit 3 Micro: Examples of Price Discrimination in Action
31st October 2011
I tweeted earlier on today asking economics teaching colleagues what examples they like to use when teaching the topic of price discrimination under conditions of monopoly / imperfect competition. Thank you to everyone who contributed!
James Hazeldine offered a great idea for independent research - when teaching price discrimination he asks students to try booking flights on EasyJet or Ryanair. Pupils are given a route and then they have to find the most expensive and cheapest price
Steve Whiteley likes to use a multitude of real world examples that students can identify instinctively to embed the issues of how, why and what happens when price targeting takes place. He focuses on examples from theatres and cinema, air fares, bank accounts together with software pricing.
Mike McCartney has had his students investigating “sport” versions of bottled water in this contestable market
Ben White send his students to trainline.com view prices of trains to London at peak and off-peak times and advanced / pay on day ticket pricing. The challenge set is which pupil can find the cheapest/dearest?
Ruth Tarrant has often used superb examples drawn from the cinema industry - once again students can be asked to go online and research pricing for tickets at different times of the day, cinema pricing by region and by group and other forms of segmentation.
I am sure there are many more - please tweet me @tutor2u_econ to add in some more and I will expand the blog in a few days time!
One Twitter follower suggests the cost of hiring a taxi after midnight (this definitely appeals to the party animals in the class!)
Geoff Riley
Geoff Riley FRSA has been teaching Economics for over thirty years. He has over twenty years experience as Head of Economics at leading schools. He writes extensively and is a contributor and presenter on CPD conferences in the UK and overseas.