Logistics and Supply Chain Management, 6th Edition

What is a service?

Typically, services are seen as being intangible in the sense that they are not physical objects like products. Other characteristics of a service are that production and consumption take place at the same time. Services are also ‘perishable’ in that, unlike physical products, they cannot be made and stored in advance. They also tend to be heterogeneous because they generally involve human interaction and so each delivery of the service can be different.

In a sense, trying to define the difference between a product and a service is self-defeating. It can be argued that the distinction between ‘products’ and ‘services’ is becoming increasingly blurred. In the past a physical product was typically sold as a stand-alone, self-contained ...