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]
References
^Michael J. Thomas (1995), Gower Handbook of Marketing, p. 377, Gower Publishing Ltd. ISBN0-566-07441-9
^Zeithaml, Valarie A., A. Parasuraman, & Leonard L. Berry (1985). Problems and strategies in services marketing. Journal of Marketing, 49(2), 33-46.
^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. ISBN978-0762308231
^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.
^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.
^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
^Keh, Hean Tat & Jun Pang (2010). Customer reactions to service separation. Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 55-70.
^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.
^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.
^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.
