Over on the Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner noted that Amazon was selling the Caucasian version of a dollhouse for much more than the African-American version. As he notes, while this looks bad for Amazon, it’s ultimately caused by different sellers charging different prices (with Amazon selling one item themselves, and a third party supplying the other).
However, at least one seller is selling both items themselves, and charging far more for the white version. See them both below:
That’s some shifty business, “Sweet Solutions”. Ultimately though, while automated pricing, multiple vendors, and guile are problematic, it seems the real problem might be having ethnically-specific toys at all. Green dolls seem like a much better idea.
