After Life — Ordering a Kid’s Meal

In this clip, the main character, played by Ricky Garvais, is taking his nephew out to lunch. They decide to both order the fish sticks meal from the kids’ menu. When Ricky attempts to order this meal, the waitress informs him it is only for children. Although the café is practicing a common form of price discrimination, Ricky’s character is confused and argues he should be able to order the meal and pay a smaller price for a smaller portion. The server argues this is not true, and that the meal is made cheaper for children. The character claims his nephew is hungry and wants to eat two meals… much to the waitress’s chagrin.

This clip is an excellent display of price discrimination, the necessary condition of being able to segment the consumer base (by age- with visual confirmation), and a conversation/confusion around if different prices truly reflect different marginal costs of production.

Thanks to Sheena Murray for the clip submission and summary!

The Chi — Price > Marginal Cost

Coogie Johnson rides up to the corner store to get a grape pop and beef jerky. Habib, the store owner, tells him it’s $1.00 for the soda and $1.75 for the jerky. Coogie then tries to talk Habib down to letting him pay $0.25 for soda and pay full price for the jerky to which his son nodded in approval. Even though the retail price for the soda and the jerky are $1.00 and $1.75, respectively. Coogie knows that the soda is priced well above the marginal cost and attempts to negotiate the price down closer to the marginal cost. Habib argues that it’s not fair to charge him a different price than other customers, but the son recognizes that some profit is better than no profit and agrees to sell it to Coogie at a lower price.

Thanks to Kyle Davis for the reference.

Up ↑