TRANSPORTATION CONT.

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Major Modes of Transportation

Services are intangible products that cannot be C- seen or touched; they are provided to consumers or other companies. A physician provides ny healthcare to patients. Communication companies provide services such as Internet access, television programming and the ability to make local or long-distance telephone calls. Banks provide a range of financial services to customers, such as checking accounts and investment opportunities. Other companies provide services such as lawn care, plumbing home repair, business consulting, transportation etc.
There are differences between services and goods. The first is that a service is an intangible process that cannot be weighed or measured, whereas a good is a tangible output of a process that has physical dimensions. This distinction has important business implications since a service innovation, unlike a product innovation, cannot be patented. Thus, a company with a new concept must expand rapidly before competitors copy its procedures. Service intangibility presents a problem for customers since, unlike with a physical product, they cannot try it out and test it before purchase.
The second is that a service requires some degree of interaction with the customer for it to be a service. The interaction may be brief, but it must exist for the service to be complete. Where face-to-face service is required, the service facility must be designed to handle the customer’s presence. Goods, on the other hand, are generally produced in a facility separate from the customer. They can be made according to a production schedule that is efficient for the company.
The third is that services, with t of hard technologies such as ATMs and information technologies such as answering 2. machines and automated Internet exchanges, are inherently heterogeneous-they vary from day to day and even hour by hour as a function of the attitudes of the customers and the servers.
Thus, even highly scripted work such as that 3. found in call centre can produce unpredictable outcomes. Goods, in contrast, can be produced 4. to meet very tight specifications day-in and day out with essentially zero variability. In those cases where a defective good is produced, it can be reworked or scrapped.
The fourth is that services as a process 6. are perishable and time-dependent, and unlike 7. goods, they cannot be stored.
Both goods and services need not be driven by economic motives. Several times, goods and services are linked closely and cannot be detached. For example, on the purchase of a car, the good is the car but the processing, the provision of accessories, and after-sales activities are all services. It is essential to note that the differences between pure goods and pure services are in contrast but most goods and services exist in between with a mix of both. For instance, in a restaurant, food refers to goods while the service is the waiters offering the ambience amd the setting of tables among others.
REVISION QUESTIONS
1. What is a product.
2. Write a short note on each of the following types of consumer goods with examples:
(a) Convenience goods.
(b) Shopping goods.
(c) Specialty goods.
3. What are industrial goods? Give examples.
4. Differentiate between goods and services.
5. (a) What is a product? (b) Distinguish between product and production concepts. (c) State seven reasons why all new products may fail in the market?
6. State four attributes of a product brand
7. State six causes of customer dissatis faction in a product.090
8 Explain the following classifications of products with two examples each from agricultural-based products.
(a) industrial products; (b) consumers products; (c) primary products;
(d) secondary products.