Customer Discrimination

A-Tier
Journal: Review of Economics and Statistics
Year: 2010
Volume: 92
Issue: 3
Pages: 670-678

Score contribution per author:

1.341 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We test for customer discrimination with data from more than 800 retail stores employing over 70,000 individuals matched to census data on the demographics of each store's community. While our tests detect some increase in sales when the workforce more closely resembles potential customers, the effects we find are modest in magnitude. Customer discrimination is neither strong nor pervasive. We find little payoff to matching employee demographics to those of potential customers except when the customers do not speak English. © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:tpr:restat:v:92:y:2010:i:3:p:670-678
Journal Field
General
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-25