Brand Identity vs Brand Image
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Food Retailing: Indian Perspective
Food Retailing in India is witnessing a progressive change with the emergence of the hypermarkets/supermarkets and rapid expansion of organized retail sector in India across various parts of the country. With the world’s second-largest population and rising composition of Middle-Income group, India has emerged as the world’s most attractive retailing destinations especially in the Food […]
Brand Management Challenges in Changing Times
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Stages in Consumer Decision Making Process
An individual who purchases products and services from the market for his/her own personal consumption is called as consumer. To understand the complete process of consumer decision making, let us first go through the following example: Tim went to a nearby retail store to buy a laptop for himself. The store manager showed him all […]
It is the People Who Contribute to Operational Excellence
Establishing leadership whether in a product market or a services market is not easy, especially in the fast changing world where the life cycle of products and services tends to be very short. A look at the Companies that have grown in stature and maintained their growth story tells you of the hard work that […]
The world economy nowadays is increasingly characterized as a service economy. This is primarily due to the increasing importance and share of the service sector in the economies of most developed and developing countries.
In fact, the growth of the service sector has long been considered as indicative of a country’s economic progress.
Economic history tells us that all developing nations have invariably experienced a shift from agriculture to industry and then to the service sector as the main stay of the economy.
This shift has also brought about a change in the definition of goods and services themselves. No longer are goods considered separate from services. Rather, services now increasingly represent an integral part of the product and this interconnectedness of goods and services is represented on a goods-services continuum.
The American Marketing Association defines services as - “Activities, benefits and satisfactions which are offered for sale or are provided in connection with the sale of goods.”
The defining characteristics of a service are:
Intangibility: Services are intangible and do not have a physical existence. Hence services cannot be touched, held, tasted or smelt. This is most defining feature of a service and that which primarily differentiates it from a product.
Also, it poses a unique challenge to those engaged in marketing a service as they need to attach tangible attributes to an otherwise intangible offering.
While products can be mass produced and be homogenous the same is not true of services. eg: All burgers of a particular flavor at McDonalds are almost identical. However, the same is not true of the service rendered by the same counter staff consecutively to two customers.
Moreover, it is very difficult to separate a service from the service provider. Eg: the barber is necessarily a part of the service of a haircut that he is delivering to his customer.
Given below are the fundamental differences between physical goods and services:
| Goods | Services |
| A physical commodity | A process or activity |
| Tangible | Intangible |
| Homogenous | Heterogeneous |
| Production and distribution are separation from their consumption | Production, distribution and consumption are simultaneous processes |
| Can be stored | Cannot be stored |
| Transfer of ownership is possible | Transfer of ownership is not possible |
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