Selling a service is more complex than selling a tangible product like soaps, perfumes and food items. Tangible products can be manufactured, packaged and can be stored in a warehouse which later can be sold to wholesalers, retailers, and ultimate consumers. However, services are intangible products. This is because services are performances or actions rather than objects. It cannot be seen, tasted, felt, touched, and you cannot smell a service as compared to a tangible product like soap.
The distinct characteristic of service led to the development of various marketing concepts that focus on the attributes of service. This led to the concept known as “service marketing”; a unique discipline that focuses on the activities related to the satisfaction of customer needs and wants through the execution of service.
But what exactly are the differences between service and a tangible product?
A service is intangible. As mentioned earlier, we cannot physically examine a service as compared to tangible products. Service is actually described as “experience”. When you visit a hotel, it's not really just the rooms that the company is selling. It also includes the receptionist, the bellboy, the ambiance of the lobby, and other facilities of the hotel. All these factors can affect the experience of the guest during his or her stay. The hotel may have an exceptional rooms and facilities but if the hotel staffs are unfriendly, the over all experience of the customer may not be of good quality.
Services cannot be mass produced. Service cannot be mass produced and inventoried for latter distribution or consumption. If you are an airline company, holidays are considered peak seasons. Your planes and airline crews will be fully utilized during these months. However, for lean months when people travel less, the airline company is stuck with the same number of airplanes and crews yet they have very few customers. This example only shows that service cannot be manufactured in advance and stored for future use.
A service is perishable. Tangible products have expiry dates or carry a “best before” tag in their labels. Services do not have expiry dates because once a service is executed it must be consumed immediately. Also, a service cannot be resold or returned as compared to manufactured goods.
A service is difficult to standardize. Unlike soaps, a manufacturer can produce millions and millions of soap bars with the same size, same scent and same quality. Unlike service, you cannot deliver an identical service to all you clients. An employee's execution of his action towards his clients may be influenced by many factors. A receiving clerk may be very friendly early in the morning but may be a bit cranky in the afternoon. Or a client on a hurry may be very nasty to a bank teller especially if there is a long queue as compared to a client who is not really on track of his time.
A service is difficult to price. Putting a price tag is probably one of the major challenges that marketing practitioners need to address. Customers may perceive low priced service as low quality service. Pricing must be well connected to the kind of service your company would like to portray. Just like a low-budget airline will not serve snacks or drinks because this is what customers paid for. An airline customer will not be very happy of an airline that charges premium fees but does not offer meals or beverages during their flight.
A service cannot be patented. Owners of tangible products especially the newly invented products are protected against their competitors. Secret ingredients or even the design of their products may be registered and patented in a specific government agency. Unlike in services, competitors can easily copy your service methods. To stay in the game, service companies are continuously finding ways to service their clients in a distinct way either by designing a new service model or simply copying the service models of their competitors.
