The Services and the Importance of Changing the Approach

In the activities that are carried out in trade, two types of goods – services and products – execute an exchange. This exchange can be made for something tangible or intangible. “Services are designated to be immaterial goods while products are tangible and physical commodities” (Volpi & Paulino, 2018, p. 327-334). There is a difference between these two types of goods and that is what  constitutes the tertiary sector: If a person does not offer products, he/she is supposed to produce services (Fisher & Navarro, 1994, p. 185).

According to the concept product service system (PSS) “the integration of products and services plays an important role in the development of enterprises and the development of new markets in order to meet the higher needs of customers” (Wang, 2019, p. 705-709). Companies usually seek to satisfy those needs that customers do not even know they have. Services are “any activity or benefit that one party offers to another; they are essentially intangible and do not give rise to ownership of anything. Their production may or may not be linked to a physical product” (Kotler, 1997, p. 656).

A Perception of Service

The customer’s perception of quality is fundamental for the innovative development of German companies. However, it is difficult to ensure consistent quality because what a company believes it is providing may be very different from what the customer perceives to be receiving (Duque, 2005, p. 64-80). Furthermore, measuring quality perception has an even bigger challenge: As a result of their intangibility, a company “may find it difficult to understand how consumers perceive and evaluate its services and the quality of service delivery” (Zeithaml, 1988, p. 2-22).

Nowadays, Germany promotes a type of development in which “services are significant consumers of natural resources” (Djellal & Gallouj, 2015, p. 83-104). For that reason, it is necessary to change the approach to achieve sustainable development. One way to do that is by adopting service-oriented computing and cloud computing that “have a reciprocal relationship that allows to provide consumers with the computing of services and the services of computing […]. Cloud environment becomes a natural choice to deliver various types of resources as services” (Mezni & Sellami, 2017, p. 138-152).

Cloud environments provide storage for data, which is accessed through internet without a hard disk. Storage is easier since a physical element is not required. That way, companies do what they have offered to consumers providing a better quality service with the best technology..

Conclusion

Globalization plays an important role in the exchange of goods or services. This is because “given the global nature of the market, competing firms are constantly seeking to project their firms’ superior quality of service, customer-perceived value, and image in order to gain customer loyalty” (Sunny, Kandampully & Devi, 2009, p. 111-125). However,  to achieve sustainable development  we need to redirect our objectives. That is to say, opt for an approach in which goods and services can be offered in a more sustainable way because “manufacturing is undergoing transformation expressed in growing digital content and consequently a greater service orientation, resource sharing, openness, and democratization” (Kusiak, 2019, p. 198-204).

References

Djellal, F., & Gallouj, F. (2015). Green and sustainable innovation in a service economy. In Handbook of Service Business. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Duque, E. (2005). Revisión del concepto de calidad del servicio y sus modelos de medición. INNOVAR Revista de Ciencias Administrativas y Sociales, 15 (25), 64-80.

Fisher, l. & Navarro, V. (1994). Introducción a la investigación de mercado (3.ª ed.). México: McGraw-Hill Interamericana.

Kotler, P. (1997). Mercadotecnia. Prentice-Hall hispanoamericana S.A.

Kusiak, A. (2019). Service manufacturing: Basic concepts and technologies. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 52, 198-204.

Mezni, H & Sellami, M. (2017). Multi-cloud service composition using Formal Concept Analysis. Journal of Systems and Software, 134, 138-152.

Sunny, H.H., Kandampully, J. & Devi, J. (2009). Relationships and Impacts of Service Quality, Perceived Value, Customer Satisfaction, and Image: An Empirical Study. The Service Industries Journal. 29. 111-125.

Volpi, Y.D. & Paulino, S.R. (2018). The sustainability of services: Considerations on the materiality of accommodation services from the concept of life cycle thinking. Journal of Cleaner Production, 192, 327-334.

Wang, Z. (2019). Research on Design Method of Intelligent Service System in Product Processing under PSS Concept. Procedia CIRP, 83, 705-709.

Zeithaml, V. A. (1988). Consumer perceptions of Price. Quality and value: A Means-End Model and Synthesis of Evidence. Journal of Marketing, 52, 2-22.