Pricing Durable Add-Ons: Selling vs. Leasing
研究垄断企业销售或租赁耐用品附加产品（如车辆自动驾驶软件）的定价策略，发现销售附加产品可能比租赁更有利可图，因为租赁存在期内不平衡问题。
Many firms offer products that consist of a durable base good (e.g., a vehicle) and a durable add-on (e.g., autopilot software). Some lease the add-on, whereas others sell it through intertemporal price discrimination or bundled pricing. Motivated by these practices, we examine whether a monopolistic firm should lease or sell the add-on when offering both durables. The literature suggests that leasing is preferable for a single durable good as it avoids the time inconsistency problem associated with selling. However, because leasing lacks an intertemporal link, it is less efficient than selling in balancing surplus extraction across consumers, leading to what we call the intraperiod imbalance problem. When the firm sells the base good, this can resolve the time inconsistency of add-on selling but perpetuate the intraperiod imbalance of add-on leasing. Thus, selling the add-on can be more profitable than leasing it. When the firm can choose between selling or leasing the base good, selling both the base good and the add-on can be more profitable than leasing both. This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing. Funding: P. Yu was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72371038, 72033003]. L. Lei was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72301042, 72250065]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03064 .