Evaluation differences between goods and services : the role of product intangibility

摘要

This work considers services marketing theory regarding consumer evaluations. A commonassertion within the services marketing literature is that services are more difficult to evaluatethan goods. Part of this work examines this assertion by theoretical and empirical means.Several evaluative dimensions are examined (perceived evaluation difficulty, perceivedprocessing effort, certainty of evaluation, predictive ability and the use of information sources).The results suggest that consumers do not find services more difficult to evaluate than goods.A second purpose of this study was to investigate evaluative effects of product intangibility.Product intangibility is conceptulised as a three-dimensional construct. The three dimensionsare: abstractness, generality and lack of pre-purchase inspection possibilities. The resultssupport this multi-dimensional conceptualisation of the product intangibility construct. Also,the results suggest that the different intangibility dimensions give rise to different effects withrespect to consumers product evaluation. Abstractness has a negative influence over perceivedevaluation difficulty, whilst generality has a positive influence over perceived evaluationdifficulty. The effects regarding the use of information sources exhibited an opposite pattern,where the abstractness dimension supported predictions made in the services marketingliterature, whilst the generality dimension opposed these. No effects related to the evaluativedimensions are found with respect to lack of pre-purchase inspection possibilities except forthe use of a couple information sources.In view of the observed results a distinction between goods and services based on consumerevaluations is questionable.