Many new purchases involve consumers trading in their old product at the same time, requiring them to assume the dual role of a buyer and a seller in the overall exchange. This research examines how framing the overall exchange as a partitioned transaction with separate prices for the new purchase and the trade-in, or a consolidated transaction with a single net price after accounting for the trade-in price, affects consumer preferences. We find that consumers prefer a partitioned (consolidated) transaction when the relative trade-in price is high (low). Unlike previous explanations based on heuristic processing and differential importance of the trade-in price, our reasoning is that partitioning (vs. consolidating) prices makes salient and enables evaluability of the trade-in price. In the absence of specific referents, consumers rely on the new purchase price to evaluate the merits of the trade-in price. Consistent with our reasoning, we identify boundary conditions for the findings. The presence of a favorable referent for the trade-in and whether the new purchase and the trade-in are (perceived to be) in the same product category attenuate the reliance on the new purchase price as a referent. Our findings have important theoretical and managerial implications.

中文翻译：

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分区还是不分区：以旧换新价格在消费者对涉及以旧换新的购买评估中的作用

许多新购买涉及消费者同时交易他们的旧产品，要求他们在整个交易中承担买家和卖家的双重角色。本研究探讨了如何将整体交易构建为新购买和以旧换新价格分开的分区交易，或在考虑以旧换新价格后具有单一净价的合并交易，如何影响消费者偏好。我们发现，当相对以旧换新价格高（低）时，消费者更喜欢分区（合并）交易。与先前基于启发式处理和以旧换新价格的不同重要性的解释不同，我们的推理是，划分（与合并）价格变得突出并能够评估以旧换新价格。在没有具体参照物的情况下，消费者依靠新的购买价格来评估以旧换新价格的优劣。根据我们的推理，我们确定了研究结果的边界条件。存在对以旧换新有利的参照物以及新购买和以旧换新是否（被认为）属于同一产品类别，会减弱对新购买价格作为参照物的依赖。我们的研究结果具有重要的理论和管理意义。