Category: Services

A service is an “(intangible) act or use for which a consumer, firm, or government is willing to pay.”Examples include work done by barbers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, banks, insurance companies, and so on. Public services are those that society (nation state, fiscal union or region) as a whole pays for. Using resources, skill, ingenuity, and experience, service providers benefit service consumers. Service is intangible in nature. Services may be defined as acts or performances whereby the service provider provides value to the customer.

In a narrower sense, service refers to quality of customer service: the measured appropriateness of assistance and support provided to a customer. This particular usage occurs frequently in retailing.

Services can be described in terms of I’s.

Intangibility
Services are by definition intangible. They are not manufactured, transported or stocked.

One cannot store services for future use. They are produced and consumed simultaneously.

Perishability
Services are perishable in two regards:

Service-relevant resources, processes, and systems are assigned for service delivery during a specific period in time. If the service consumer does not request and consume the service during this period, the related resources may go unused. From the perspective of the service provider, this is a lost business opportunity if no other use for those resources is available. Examples: A hairdresser serves another client. An empty seat on an airplane cannot be filled after departure.
When the service has been completely rendered to the consumer, this particular service irreversibly vanishes. Example: a passenger has been transported to the destination.
The service provider must deliver the service at the exact time of service consumption. The service is not manifested in a physical object that is independent of the provider. The service consumer is also inseparable from service delivery. Examples: The service consumer must sit in the hairdresser’s chair, or in the airplane seat. Correspondingly, the hairdresser or the pilot must be in the shop or plane, respectively, to deliver the service.

Inconsistency (variability)
Each service is unique. It can never be exactly repeated as the time, location, circumstances, conditions, current configurations and/or assigned resources are different for the next delivery, even if the same service is requested by the consumer. Many services are regarded as heterogeneous and are typically modified for each service-consumer or for each service-context. Example: The taxi service which transports the service consumer from home to work is different from the taxi service which transports the same service consumer from work to home – another point in time, the other direction, possibly another route, probably another taxi-driver and cab. Another and more common term for this is heterogeneity.

Service quality
Mass generation and delivery of services must be mastered for a service provider to expand. This can be seen as a problem of service quality. Both inputs and outputs to the processes involved providing services are highly variable, as are the relationships between these processes, making it difficult to maintain consistent service quality. Many services involve variable human activity, rather than a precisely determined process; exceptions include utilities. The human factor is often the key success factor in service provision. Demand can vary by season, time of day, business cycle, etc. Consistency is necessary to create enduring business relationships.

Business services are a recognisable subset of economic services, and share their characteristics. The essential difference is that businesses are concerned about the building of service systems in order to deliver value to their customers and to act in the roles of service provider and service consume

A service is a set of one-time consumable and perishable benefits that are:

1. delivered from the accountable service provider, mostly in close co-action with his internal and external service suppliers,
2. effectuated by distinct functions of technical systems and by distinct activities of individuals, respectively,
3. commissioned according to the needs of his/her service consumers by the service customer from the accountable service provider,
4. rendered individually to a consumer at his/her dedicated trigger,
5. and, finally, consumed and utilized by the triggering service consumer for executing his/her upcoming business activity or private activity.

Service specification
Any service can be clearly and completely, consistently and concisely specified by means of the following 12 standard attributes which conform to the MECE principle (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive):

Service-Commodity Goods continuum
There has been a long academic debate on what makes services different from goods. The historical perspective in the late-eighteen and early-nineteenth centuries focused on creation and possession of wealth. Classical economists contended that goods were objects of value over which ownership rights could be established and exchanged. Ownership implied tangible possession of an object that had been acquired through purchase, barter or gift from the producer or previous owner and was legally identifiable as the property of the current owner.

Adam Smith’s book The Wealth of Nations, published in Great Britain in 1776, distinguished between the outputs of what he termed “productive” and “unproductive” labor. The former, he stated, produced goods that could be stored after production and subsequently exchanged for money or other items of value. The latter, however useful or necessary, created services that perished at the time of production and therefore did not contribute to wealth. Building on this theme, French economist Jean-Baptiste Say argued that production and consumption were inseparable in services, coining the term “immaterial products” to describe them.

Most modern business theorists see a continuum with pure service on one terminal point and pure commodity good on the other terminal point. Most products fall between these two extremes. For example, a restaurant provides a physical good (the food), but also provides services in the form of ambience, the setting and clearing of the table, etc. And although some utilities actually deliver physical goods — like water utilities which actually deliver water — utilities are usually treated as services.

In a narrower sense, service refers to quality of customer service: the measured appropriateness of assistance and support provided to a customer. This particular usage occurs frequently in retailing.

Economic services
Economic services that are recognised in practice are listed in economic services.