Total Quality Management in Services: Part 1: Understanding and Classifying Services Available to Purchase

Reviews the literature dealing with the nature and characteristics of service and applies it to 30 selected services with the objective of synthesizing a classification scheme to recognize operational similarities between services. This has the purpose of enabling learning by comparison of services which would normally be thought of as being different, and also to enable examination of service quality in the other two articles completing the series. Some of the reasons given for the growth of services are found to be the provision of new services,the possibilities created by new technology, the development of producer services and introduction and emphasis of services to differentiate and augment goods products. Given the resultant diversity of service the Standard Industrial Classification is a poor indicator of service content. In what ways should service be studied? One view is that study should be unified and theories developed which are capable of embracing both goods and services. A second view is that distinctions need to be studied to avoid any assumption that theories and approaches developed in a manufactured goods context automatically can be applied to services. In contrast to both of these, what actually happens in many services is that they are often developed and staffed by people who have little direct experience of, and have no accessible means of building on, the successful approaches taken by other services. Uses several of the theoretical and empirical ways in which services have been categorized to classify the range of services. Resolves subjective assessment of labour intensity, contact, interaction, tailoring,intangibility, and recipient into five groups –personal, shop,professional, mass and factory services – which partially confirms but also extends earlier classification schemes.