Goods and services

What are goods and services?

The goods and services are goods, objects and activities that seek to satisfy the needs of people. These are the result of a production process carried out by economic agents.

The main difference between goods and services lies in that the goods are tangible, be it an object or a commodity, while services are intangible and are defined as an activity provided by a service provider.

Characteristics of goods and services

Characteristics of the goods

The main characteristics of the goods are the following:

• Materials: goods can be touched, they are tangible, so their transformation is also possible.
• Utility: they are capable of satisfying a large number of human desires.
• Shortage: goods are scarce because, in general, they are not in abundance, and therefore they almost always have an unrelated value. For example, milk is a rare commodity because it is a limited product.
• Transferable: Assets can be transferred between individuals by buying and selling.

Characteristics of the services

The main characteristics of the services are the following:

• Intangibility: the services cannot be touched, but rather symbolize an action, process or activity.
• Variability: The services are always different from each other, there are never 2 equal services since the delivery of each service is carried out by a person or staff in specific places and times. By changing any of these aspects, the service offered changes.
• Inseparability: The services provided are not separated from the one receiving the service, but rather the process is simultaneous.

Difference between goods and services

Below are the main differences between goods and services:

Examples of goods and services

Here are some representative examples of goods and services:

Examples of goods

• The food offered by a restaurant.
• A cell phone.
• A household appliance, be it a coffee maker, a television, etc.
• The software from a computer.
• The vehiclesEither a car or a motorcycle.
• A property, be it a house or an apartment.

Examples of services

• The service that offers a restaurant (waiters, waiters, valet parking, etc).
• The technical service repair of a cell phone.
• The Customer Support of a local.
• A programmer that encodes the software of a computer.
• The repair service provided by a mechanical workshop.
• A technician working on plumbing and carpentry repair.
• Any professional job, be it from law, architecture, engineering, etc.