Standardisation and particularisation in services: evidence from Germany

摘要

Services have been widely neglected by economists and analysts of innovation, who have instead focused on manufacturing. One of the Widely supposed features of services outputs is that they are often highly tailored to their clients. In practice, however, Serivces are sometimes mass-produced and sometimes customised versions of standard products, but can also be produced On a one-off basis. This paper examines the pattern of service activities using German evidence with respect to the structure Of service firms' income from 'standardised', 'partially customised' and 'bespoke' services.