Intangible
Intangible things are not physical objects and only exist in connection to other
things. Examples include a brands image, or goodwill. Harker (1995) humorously,
though usefully described services as ‘something that you cannot drop on your
foot’, which vividly illustrates the intangible characteristics of services. Although
the habit of describing services as intangible goods comes from the economics literature
(Hill 1999; Miller 2000), this view is common in management and marketing
sectors (Chase and Aquilano 1992; Bowen and Ford 2002).
However intangibility may have failings as a differentiator between service and
product. What is music, a book or a film? A product or a service? Hill (1999) identified
this group of intangible products in the form of entities that are recorded and
stored on media such as paper, film, tape or disk. Intangible products include the
stories generated by authors, music created by composers or software games
designed by software engineers. Although these have no physical dimensions of
their own, Hill (1999) argues that in their saleable form these intangible products
have the salient economic characteristics of goods and little in common
with services.
Therefore he suggests this type of intangible product should be recognised
and marketed as a type of good rather than a service. The intangible nature of service
is a useful characteristic to employ, but an ambiguity remains