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Pricing for sales and per-use rental services with vertical differentiation

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  • Yu, Yugang
  • Dong, Yuxuan
  • Guo, Xiaolong

Abstract

An increasing number of firms are simultaneously offering consumers products for sale and for per-use rental services. Typically, the products offered in per-use rental services are different from those offered for sale. For example, automobiles offered in Daimler’s Car2Go program are “Smart” cars, which have a smaller size than the typical automobiles sold to consumers. Such a difference, which is objectively measurable and captured by quality, is called a vertical differentiation. This study investigates the optimal pricing problem for per-use rental services and sales, and reveals how per-use rental services interplay with sales when vertical differentiation exists. The optimal solution is unique and determined by a model that uses a marginal renter and a marginal buyer as decision variables rather than the prices of per-use rental services and sales. The vertical differentiation significantly influences a firm’s potential profitability. When the vertical differentiation falls into a certain interval, the potential profitability from per-use rental services is higher than that from sales, which explains why the per-use rental business model is increasing in popularity. Finally, the results show that offering products with a relatively high (low) quality in per-use rental services (sales) is highly profitable for product categories with a strong pooling effect or when there are high firm-side benefits from ownership. This finding enriches the existing literature by providing novel perspectives on ownership and the pooling effect, and these insights are illustrated through a numerical example.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu, Yugang & Dong, Yuxuan & Guo, Xiaolong, 2018. "Pricing for sales and per-use rental services with vertical differentiation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 270(2), pages 586-598.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:270:y:2018:i:2:p:586-598
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.03.035
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