Inseparability

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Inseparability is a term used in marketing to describe a key quality of services as distinct from goods, namely the characteristic that a service has which renders it impossible to divorce the supply or production of the service from its consumption. [1] Other key characteristics of services include perishability, intangibility and variability (or heterogeneity). [2]

Although the notion of inseparability has become received wisdom in the marketing and services marketing literature over the past few decades, [3] more recent research has challenged inseparability as a distinguishing characteristic of services. [4] [5]

Developments in research

Lovelock and Gummesson (2004, p. 29) conceptually argue that "there is a large group of separable services that do not involve the customer directly, with the result that production and consumption need not be simultaneous". [6] Examples of such separated services include freight transportation, dry cleaning, and routine maintenance on a wide array of equipment and facilities. Lovelock and Gummesson (2004) conclude that only one category of services — physical acts to customers' bodies, such as a haircut or medical examination — is inseparate. In the other three categories (i.e., physical acts to owned objects, nonphysical acts to customers’ minds, and processing of information), consumption can be separated from production, if so desired and designed into the system. Thus, inseparability is not effective as a distinguishing characteristic of services in general. [7]

In the first empirical investigation, Keh and Pang (2010) defined service separation as "customers' absence from service production, which denotes the spatial separation between service production and consumption". [8] They showed that service separation increases customers’ perceptions of not only access convenience and benefit convenience, but also performance risk and psychological risk. Subsequent research has investigated applications of service separation in a variety of contexts, including smart interactive services, [9] telehealth, [10] and higher (online) education. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marketing</span> Study and process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to customers

Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emphasize in advertising; operation of advertising campaigns; attendance at trade shows and public events; design of products and packaging attractive to buyers; defining the terms of sale, such as price, discounts, warranty, and return policy; product placement in media or with people believed to influence the buying habits of others; agreements with retailers, wholesale distributors, or resellers; and attempts to create awareness of, loyalty to, and positive feelings about a brand. Marketing is typically done by the seller, typically a retailer or manufacturer. Sometimes tasks are contracted to a dedicated marketing firm or advertising agency. More rarely, a trade association or government agency advertises on behalf of an entire industry or locality, often a specific type of food, food from a specific area, or a city or region as a tourism destination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Service (economics)</span> Transaction involving no transferal of physical goods

A service is an 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 as a whole pays for. Using resources, skill, ingenuity, and experience, service providers benefit service consumers. Services may be defined as intangible acts or performances whereby the service provider provides value to the customer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Distribution (marketing)</span> Making products available to customers

Distribution is the process of making a product or service available for the consumer or business user who needs it, and a distributor is a business involved in the distribution stage of the value chain. Distribution can be done directly by the producer or service provider, or using indirect channels with distributors or intermediaries. Distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix: the other three elements being product, pricing, and promotion.

The term "marketing mix" is a foundation model for businesses, historically centered around product, price, place, and promotion. The marketing mix has been defined as the "set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Services marketing</span> Branch of marketing specialised in services

Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing which emerged as a separate field of study in the early 1980s, following the recognition that the unique characteristics of services required different strategies compared with the marketing of physical goods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Service economy</span> Economy mainly driven by sales of services

Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consumer behaviour</span> Study of individuals, groups, or organisations and all the activities associated with consuming

Consumer behaviour is the study of individuals, groups, or organisations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services. Consumer behaviour consists of how the consumer's emotions, attitudes, and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, marketing, and economics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online shopping</span> Form of electronic commerce

Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2020, customers can shop online using a range of different computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.

Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals." Customers play an important role and are essential in keeping a product or service relevant; it is, therefore, in the best interest of the business to ensure customer satisfaction and build customer loyalty.

A core product or flagship product is a company's primary promotion, service or product that can be purchased by a consumer. Core products may be integrated into end products, either by the company producing the core product or by other companies to which the core product is sold.

Co-creation, in the context of a business, refers to a product or service design process in which input from consumers plays a central role from beginning to end. Less specifically, the term is also used for any way in which a business allows consumers to submit ideas, designs or content. This way, the firm will not run out of ideas regarding the design to be created and at the same time, it will further strengthen the business relationship between the firm and its customers. Another meaning is the creation of value by ordinary people, whether for a company or not.

Customer attrition, also known as customer churn, customer turnover, or customer defection, is the loss of clients or customers.

Intangibility refers to the lack of palpable or tactile property making it difficult to assess service quality. According to Zeithaml et al., “Because services are performances, rather than objects, they cannot be seen, felt, tasted, or touched in the same manner in which goods can be sensed.” As a result, intangibility has historically been seen as the most important distinction between services and products in the literature on services marketing. Other key characteristics of services include perishability, inseparability and variability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Service blueprint</span>

The service blueprint is a technique originally used for service design, but has also found applications in diagnosing problems with operational efficiency. The technique was first described by G. Lynn Shostack, a bank executive, in the Harvard Business Review in 1984. The service blueprint is an applied process chart which shows the service delivery process from the customer's perspective. The service blueprint has become one of the most widely used tools to manage service operations, service design and service.

A service guarantee is a marketing tool service firms have increasingly been using to reduce consumer risk perceptions, signal quality, differentiate a service offering, and to institutionalize and professionalize their internal management of customer complaint and service recovery. By delivering service guarantees, companies entitle customers with one or more forms of compensation, namely easy-to-claim replacement, refund or credit, under the circumstances of service delivery failure. Conditions are often put on these compensations; however, some companies provide them unconditionally.

Islamic marketing is a process of attempting to sell a product or service to customers and other stakeholders while keeping this process in accord with the principles of Islamic transaction. This includes maintaining halal for the products or services being marketed.

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 consumer.

Consumer value is used to describe a consumer's strong relative preference for certain subjectively evaluated product or service attributes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evert Gummesson</span> Swedish economist (1936–2023)

Evert Gummesson was Professor Emeritus of Service Marketing and Management at the Stockholm Business School, where he was formerly the Director of Research. He received his Ph.D. from Stockholm University, Stockholm School of Economics. He was a Fellow and Honorary Doctor of Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland, and a Fellow of the University of Tampere, Finland.

Hean Tat Keh is a professor and chair of the Department of Marketing at the Monash University Faculty of Business and Economics. He is known for his work on services marketing, consumer behavior, brand management, and marketing strategy. In particular, his research on services marketing addresses the limitations of the concepts of service inseparability and service intangibility. Keh has also published on the antecedents and consequences of brand equity. More recently, he has conducted research on sustainable marketing and healthcare marketing. His works have been cited over 9000 times according to Google Scholar.

References

  1. Michael J. Thomas (1995), Gower Handbook of Marketing, p. 377, Gower Publishing Ltd. ISBN   0-566-07441-9
  2. "Introduction to Service Marketing". ligsuniversity.com. Retrieved 2023-05-21.
  3. Zeithaml, Valarie A., A. Parasuraman, & Leonard L. Berry (1985). Problems and strategies in services marketing. Journal of Marketing, 49(2), 33-46.
  4. Betancourt, Roger & David Gautschi (2001), Product Innovation in Services: A Framework for Analysis, in Advertising and Differentiated Products, Vol. 10, M.R. Baye and J.P. Nelson, eds. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 155–183. ISBN   978-0762308231
  5. Vargo, Stephen L. & Robert F. Lusch (2004), The four service marketing myths: Remnants of a goods-based, manufacturing model, Journal of Service Research, 7(2), 324–335.
  6. Lovelock, Christopher & Evert Gummesson (2004). Whither services marketing? In search of a new paradigm and fresh perspectives. Journal of Service Research, 7(1), 20-41.
  7. Keh, Hean Tat (2015), Service Separation, in Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, 3rd edition, Vol. 9 Marketing, N. Lee and A. M. Farrell, eds., New York, NY: Wiley. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118785317.weom090240
  8. Keh, Hean Tat & Jun Pang (2010). Customer reactions to service separation. Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 55-70.
  9. Wünderlich, Nancy V., Florian V. Wangenheim, & Mary Jo Bitner (2013). High tech and high touch: a framework for understanding user attitudes and behaviors related to smart interactive services. Journal of Service Research, 16(1), 3-20.
  10. Green, Teegan, Nicole Hartley, & Nicole Gillespie (2016). Service provider’s experiences of service separation: the case of telehealth. Journal of Service Research, 19(4), 477-494.
  11. Keh, Hean Tat, Nicole Hartley, & Di Wang (2019). The differential effects of separated vs. unseparated services: The roles of performance risk and regulatory focus. Journal of Service Theory and Practice, 29(1), 93-118.