MKIS

Chapter 2

Goods, Products and Services
Glenn Parry, Linda Newnes, and Xiaoxi Huang

2.1 Introduction
Defining terminology is a useful starting point when reading or writing on the subject of service to prevent any confusion or assumptions that we all understand the terms to mean the same thing. So, what do we mean by goods, products and services? This is a book about service, but what is a ‘service’ and how is it different to ‘goods’ or ‘products’? Whilst most people intuitively know the difference between a product and service, actually defining this difference with clarity and accuracy of text is not straight forward. The terms ‘goods’ and ‘products’ appear to be used interchangeably in much of the literature, but even here we can find debate about meaning (Araujo and Spring 2006; Callon 1991, 2002). However, for the sake of brevity we will here accept that they both refer to the same thing and focus on attempts to differentiate goods and services. This quest is far from straightforward. Since the early eighteenth century academics and scholars from different domains have attempted to define these terms explicitly (Say 1803; Levitt 1981;
Hill 1999; Gadrey 2000). In this chapter we will attempt to illustrate their findings in order to provide some background to the debate.

2.2 Goods
In the eighteenth century Adam Smith (1776) stated that goods have exchangeable value and so a characteristic of a good is that its ownership rights can be established and exchanged. Goods can be considered as embodying specialised

G. Parry (*)
Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, BS16 1QY e-mail: [e-mail]
M. Macintyre et al. (eds.), Service Design and Delivery, Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8321-3_2,
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

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knowledge in a way that is highly advantageous for promoting the division of

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