Customer Discrimination in the Fast Food Market

This project studies customer discrimination against fictive male and female food truck owners with Arabic names on a Swedish University campus using a web-based experiment. Students were asked to participate in a market survey and state if they think it is a good idea to have a food truck establishment on the campus. Four names—one male Swede, one female Swede, one male Arab, and one female Arab—were randomly assigned to the food truck. We found no evidence of customer discrimination against food truck owners with Arabic names. The respondents were slightly more positive to a food truck establishment run by an Arabic male than by a Swedish male. Our results are representative in an environment with young and highly educated customers.