The Four Service Marketing Myths

TLDR

Marketing originated from a goods‑centric, manufacturing‑based model and has expanded to include non‑manufactured exchanges, yet service marketing still relies on that model, emphasizing characteristics such as intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, and perishability. The authors contend that these traditional service characteristics are irrelevant to distinguishing services from goods, are rooted in manufacturing thinking, and lead to unsuitable strategies, and they propose that insights from service scholars can underpin a service‑dominant view of all exchange to guide better normative strategies. They find that the conventional service attributes are not distinctive, are tied to manufacturing perspectives, and result in inappropriate strategies, while adopting a service‑dominant perspective offers a more suitable framework for marketing.

Abstract

Marketing was originally built on a goods-centered, manufacturing-based model of economic exchange developed during the Industrial Revolution. Since its beginning, marketing has been broadening its perspective to include the exchange of more than manufactured goods. The subdiscipline of service marketing has emerged to address much of this broadened perspective, but it is built on the same goods and manufacturing-based model. The influence of this model is evident in the prototypical characteristics that have been identified as distinguishing services from goods—intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, and perishability. The authors argue that these characteristics (a) do not distinguish services from goods, (b) only have meaning from a manufacturing perspective, and (c) imply inappropriate normative strategies. They suggest that advances made by service scholars can provide a foundation for a more service-dominant view of all exchange from which more appropriate normative strategies can be developed for all of marketing.