Publications
Publications
- 2023
- HBS Working Paper Series
Black Ownership Matters: Does Revealing Race Increase Demand for Minority-Owned Businesses?
By: Abhay Aneja, Michael Luca and Oren Reshef
Abstract
Is there consumer demand to support Black-owned businesses? To explore, we investigate the impact of a new feature on a large online platform that made the race of a set of Black business owners salient to customers. We find that this feature substantially increased demand for Black-owned businesses - in the form of more calls to the restaurant, more delivery orders, and - using cell phone data from a different platform - more in person visits to the restaurant. Relative to previ-ous customers, new customers to Black-owned businesses were more likely to be White customers - suggesting demand among White restaurant goers to support Black-owned businesses. Accord-ingly, the gains for Black-owned businesses were larger in predominately white, Democratic-leaning areas, with less racial bias, as measured by implicit association tests.
Keywords
Black-owned Businesses; Race; Prejudice and Bias; Ownership; Knowledge Dissemination; Digital Platforms; Consumer Behavior; Food and Beverage Industry
Citation
Aneja, Abhay, Michael Luca, and Oren Reshef. "Black Ownership Matters: Does Revealing Race Increase Demand for Minority-Owned Businesses?" Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 23-042, January 2023. (Revised February 2023.)