[almostnormal]

With traditional products there were three kind of parties involved: Producer, dealer, and consumer. Renting was a concept between the latter two. At an increased logistic effort between them (returning the product, more but smaller payments) the number of products bought from the producer is reduced.

With dealers included, exhaustion occured between producer and dealer. With dealers removed and products rented exhaustion no longer occurs at all.

That's a significant change, much more so than removing dealers or a switch to renting alone.

Producers retain full control, and individual consumers lack the negotiation power dealers had, which is an issue if there is no eqivalent alternative product from a different producer.