Abstract
On 4 January 1996 a young woman named Denise Katzman filed a class action lawsuit against Victoria’s Secret, the popular lingerie brand. Her bone of contention? A colleague of hers received a catalog in which the same product was offered at a lower price. Was there a lot of money at stake? Not really. She was offered the product at a $10 discount while her colleague was offered a $25 discount. The absurdity of the situation becomes a little more apparent if you take into account the legal fees—$5000—she had to pay for the entire litigation process. It gets even curioser and curioser! It turns out that her colleague who was unfairly “favored” by Victoria’s Secret was male, which likely (though not definitively) indicates that her colleague may not even be in a position to “enjoy” that differential discount.
Unfairness is in the eye of the beholder.
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© 2015 Amitav Chakravarti and Manoj Thomas
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Chakravarti, A., Thomas, M. (2015). Paying for medicines and Tickle Me Elmo. In: Why People (Don’t) BUY. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137466693_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137466693_8
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