Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Service Economy shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Service Economy offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Service Economy at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Service Economy? Wrong! If the Service Economy is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Service Economy then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Service Economy? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Service Economy and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Service Economy wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Service Economy then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Service Economy site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Service Economy, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Service Economy, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
Composition By Sector and Labour Force By Occupation
Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments. One is the increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. Services account for a higher percentage of US
Gross domestic product than 20 years ago. The current list of
Fortune 500 companies contains more service companies and fewer manufacturers than in previous decades.
The term is also used to refer to the relative importance of service in a product offering. That is, products today have a higher service component than in previous decades. In the management literature this is referred to as
the servitization of products. Virtually every product today has a service component to it. The old dichotomy between product and service has been replaced by a
Service#The_service-goods_continuum. Many product (business)s are being transformed into services.
For example,
IBM treats its business as a service business. Although it still manufactures computers, it sees the physical goods as a small part of the "business solutions" industry. They have found that the
price elasticity of demand for "business solutions" is much less elastic than for hardware. There has been a corresponding shift to a
subscription business model. Rather than receiving a single payment for a piece of manufactured equipment, many manufacturers are now receiving a steady stream of revenue for ongoing contracts.
Full cost accounting and most accounting reform and
monetary reform measures are usually thought to be impossible to achieve without a good model of the service economy.
Environmental effects of the service economy
This is seen, especially in
green economics and more specific theories within it such as Natural Capitalism, as having these benefits:
- Much easier integration with accounting for nature's services
- Much easier integration with state services under globalization, e.g. meat inspection is a service that is assumed within a product price, but which can vary quite drastically with jurisdiction, with some serious effects.
- Association of goods movements in commodity markets with negative commodity (representing emission trading or other pollution, biodiversity loss, biosecurity risk) public bads so that no commodity can be traded without assuming responsibility for damage done by its extraction, processing, shipping, trading and sale - its comprehensive outcome
- Easier integration with urban ecology and industrial ecology modelling
- Making it easier to relate to the Experience Economy of actual quality of life decisions made by human beings based on assumptions about service, and integrating economics better with marketing theory about brand value e.g. products are purchased for their assumed reliability in some known process. This assumes that the user's experience with the brand (implying a service they expect) is far more important than its technical characteristics
Product stewardship or
product take-back are words for a specific requirement or measure in which the service of
waste disposal is included in the
distribution chain of an industrial product and is paid for at time of purchase. That is, paying for the safe and proper disposal when you pay for the product, and relying on those who sold it to you, to dispose of it.
Those who advocate it are concerned with the later phases of product lifecycle and the comprehensive outcome of the whole production process. It is considered a pre-requisite to a strict service economy interpretation of (fictional, national, legal) "commodity" and "product" relationships.
It is often applied to paint, tires, and other goods that become
toxic waste if not disposed of properly. It is most familiar as the
container deposit charged for a
deposit bottle. One pays a fee to buy the bottle, separately from the fee to buy what it contains. If one returns the bottle, the fee is returned, and the supplier must return the bottle for
re-use or recycling. If not, one has paid the fee, and presumably this can pay for
landfill or
litter control measures that dispose of say a broken bottle. Also, since the same fee can be collected by anyone finding and returning the bottle, it is common for people to collect these and return them as a means of surviving. This is quite common for instance among homeless people in U.S. cities. Legal requirements vary: the bottle itself may be considered the
property of the purchaser of the contents, or, the purchaser may have some obligation to return the bottle to some depot so it can be recycling or re-used.
In some countries, such as Germany,
law requires attention to the comprehensive outcome of the whole extraction, production, distribution, use and waste of a product, and holds those profiting from these legally responsible for any outcome along the way. This is also the trend in the
United Kingdom and
EU generally. In the United States, there have been many class action suits that are effectively product stewardship
liability - holding companies responsible for things the product does which it was never advertised to do.
Rather than let liability for these problems be taken up by the public sector or be haphazardly assigned one issue at a time to companies via lawsuits, many accounting reform efforts focus on achieving
full cost accounting. This is the
financial capital reflection of the comprehensive outcome - noting the gains and losses to all parties involved, not just those investing or purchasing. Such moves have made
moral purchasing more attractive, as it avoids liability and future lawsuits.
The
United States Environmental Protection Agency advocates product stewardship to "reduce the life-cycle environmental effects of products." The ideal of product stewardship, as administered by the EPA in 2004, "taps the shared ingenuity and responsibility of businesses, consumers, governments, and others," the EPA states at a Web site.
See also
External links
- EPA Product Stewardship Web site "highlights the latest developments in product stewardship, both in the United States and abroad."
- Coalition of Service Industries Web site "The leading trade association representing the U.S. service industry in international trade negotiations."
References
- Levitt, T. (1981) "Marketing intangible products and product intangibles", Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1981, pp. 94-102.
- Vandermerwe, S. and Rada, J. (1988) "Servitization of business: Adding value by adding services", European Management Journal, vol. 6, no. 4, 1988.
- Christian Girschner, Die Dienstleistungsgesellschaft. Zur Kritik einer fixen Idee. Kőln: PapyRossa Verlag, 2003.
de:Dienstleistungsgesellschaftsimple:Service economy
Composition By Sector and Labour Force By Occupation
Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments. One is the increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. Services account for a higher percentage of US
Gross domestic product than 20 years ago. The current list of
Fortune 500 companies contains more service companies and fewer manufacturers than in previous decades.
The term is also used to refer to the relative importance of service in a product offering. That is, products today have a higher service component than in previous decades. In the management literature this is referred to as
the servitization of products. Virtually every product today has a service component to it. The old dichotomy between product and service has been replaced by a Service#The_service-goods_continuum. Many
product (business)s are being transformed into services.
For example,
IBM treats its business as a service business. Although it still manufactures computers, it sees the physical goods as a small part of the "business solutions" industry. They have found that the price elasticity of demand for "business solutions" is much less elastic than for hardware. There has been a corresponding shift to a
subscription business model. Rather than receiving a single payment for a piece of manufactured equipment, many manufacturers are now receiving a steady stream of revenue for ongoing contracts.
Full cost accounting and most
accounting reform and monetary reform measures are usually thought to be impossible to achieve without a good model of the service economy.
Environmental effects of the service economy
This is seen, especially in
green economics and more specific theories within it such as Natural Capitalism, as having these benefits:
- Much easier integration with accounting for nature's services
- Much easier integration with state services under globalization, e.g. meat inspection is a service that is assumed within a product price, but which can vary quite drastically with jurisdiction, with some serious effects.
- Association of goods movements in commodity markets with negative commodity (representing emission trading or other pollution, biodiversity loss, biosecurity risk) public bads so that no commodity can be traded without assuming responsibility for damage done by its extraction, processing, shipping, trading and sale - its comprehensive outcome
- Easier integration with urban ecology and industrial ecology modelling
- Making it easier to relate to the Experience Economy of actual quality of life decisions made by human beings based on assumptions about service, and integrating economics better with marketing theory about brand value e.g. products are purchased for their assumed reliability in some known process. This assumes that the user's experience with the brand (implying a service they expect) is far more important than its technical characteristics
Product stewardship or
product take-back are words for a specific requirement or measure in which the service of waste disposal is included in the
distribution chain of an industrial product and is paid for at time of purchase. That is, paying for the safe and proper disposal when you pay for the product, and relying on those who sold it to you, to dispose of it.
Those who advocate it are concerned with the later phases of product lifecycle and the comprehensive outcome of the whole production process. It is considered a pre-requisite to a strict service economy interpretation of (fictional, national, legal) "commodity" and "product" relationships.
It is often applied to paint, tires, and other goods that become toxic waste if not disposed of properly. It is most familiar as the
container deposit charged for a deposit bottle. One pays a fee to buy the bottle, separately from the fee to buy what it contains. If one returns the bottle, the fee is returned, and the supplier must return the bottle for
re-use or recycling. If not, one has paid the fee, and presumably this can pay for landfill or
litter control measures that dispose of say a broken bottle. Also, since the same fee can be collected by anyone finding and returning the bottle, it is common for people to collect these and return them as a means of surviving. This is quite common for instance among
homeless people in U.S. cities. Legal requirements vary: the bottle itself may be considered the property of the purchaser of the contents, or, the purchaser may have some obligation to return the bottle to some depot so it can be recycling or re-used.
In some countries, such as
Germany, law requires attention to the
comprehensive outcome of the whole extraction, production, distribution, use and waste of a product, and holds those profiting from these legally responsible for any outcome along the way. This is also the trend in the
United Kingdom and
EU generally. In the United States, there have been many
class action suits that are effectively product stewardship liability - holding companies responsible for things the product does which it was never advertised to do.
Rather than let liability for these problems be taken up by the public sector or be haphazardly assigned one issue at a time to companies via lawsuits, many
accounting reform efforts focus on achieving full cost accounting. This is the
financial capital reflection of the comprehensive outcome - noting the gains and losses to all parties involved, not just those investing or purchasing. Such moves have made moral purchasing more attractive, as it avoids liability and future lawsuits.
The
United States Environmental Protection Agency advocates product stewardship to "reduce the life-cycle environmental effects of products." The ideal of product stewardship, as administered by the EPA in 2004, "taps the shared ingenuity and responsibility of businesses, consumers, governments, and others," the EPA states at a Web site.
See also
External links
- EPA Product Stewardship Web site "highlights the latest developments in product stewardship, both in the United States and abroad."
- Coalition of Service Industries Web site "The leading trade association representing the U.S. service industry in international trade negotiations."
References
- Levitt, T. (1981) "Marketing intangible products and product intangibles", Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1981, pp. 94-102.
- Vandermerwe, S. and Rada, J. (1988) "Servitization of business: Adding value by adding services", European Management Journal, vol. 6, no. 4, 1988.
- Christian Girschner, Die Dienstleistungsgesellschaft. Zur Kritik einer fixen Idee. Kőln: PapyRossa Verlag, 2003.
de:Dienstleistungsgesellschaftsimple:Service economy
