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What makes services different from products. In other words, what special characteristics do services possess? Services possess four distinct features not held by products, and an understanding of them is necessary to anticipate problems and to exploit the unique opportunities that some of these attributes provide. The unique characteristics of services are:
- Intangibility: Unlike products, services are intangible or impalpable, they cannot be seen, held, or touched. Whereas products are palpable things, services are performances or experiences. The main problem that intangibility creates for services marketers is that they have nothing to show the customer. Thus, experience and credence qualities are significantly important in the case of services.
- Simultaneity: In the case of goods, production and consumption are not simultaneous, and these activities do not occur at the same time or place. In the case of services, it is generally true that the producer and consumer both have to be present when a service is enacted.
- Heterogeneity: Products tend to possess a sameness, or homogeneity, that is not achieved by accident. Manufacturing lines produce homogenous products and have quality control procedures in place to test products as they come off the line, and to ensure that defective products don't reach the market. Services have the characteristic of heterogeneity. They vary in output, and mistakes happen in real time, in the customer's face, which creates a number of challenges for the services marketer.
- Perishability: Because services are produced and consumed simultaneously, they cannot be inventoried. For example, if there are twenty empty seats on an aircraft for a particular flight, the airline can't say, "Don't worry, stick them in a cupboard. We'll certainly be able to sell them over Thanksgiving." They are lost forever.
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