Selling techniques for industrial products and services: Are they different?

Abstract

Do you sell industrial services the same way as industrial products? Answers are vague or nonexistent. Some writers argue that products and services are comparable enough in nature that they can be marketed similarly.l Perhaps a traditional definition of a product has led some marketers to regard products and services as being synonymous and thus needing no distinction in the way. they are marketed: "A product is anything that might satisfy some human want. Products are ... goods, services, or ideas."Z Others suggest that because of a service's intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, and perishability -in comparison to a product's- services need to be marketed in a distinctly different way than products. 3 And another writer states that services should be marketed differently from products by recognizing a service's intangibility but building tangible characteristics into it through promotion, while highlighting a product's intangible features (such as its image).4. © 1980 Taylor & Francis Ltd.