For decades, companies located their factories in low-wage nations to churn out all kinds of goods, including toys, small appliances, inexpensive electronics, and textiles. Yet whereas moving production to low-cost locales traditionally meant production of goods almost exclusively, it increasingly applies to the production of services such as accounting and research. Many European and U.S. businesses have moved their customer service and other nonessential operations to places as far away as India to slash costs by as much as 60 percent.