Question

In terms of uniformity, which of the following is a difference between services and goods?

A. Services often involve a short-term, impersonal relationship between buyer and seller, while goods often involve a personal, long-term relationship.

B. Because of high involvement on the part of a buyer, services tend to be unique, with the quality likely to vary, while the quality and variance from standards of goods can be corrected before purchase.

C. Owing to customer non-participation, services are often linear, while goods are non-linear.

D. Services can be inventoried uniformly, while goods face stockouts due to their heterogeneous nature.

Answer 1

In case of services, there is greater involvement of buyers and subjective consideration of buyers is also on much larger scale than in the case of goods. Thus, each service delivery is unique.

On the other hand, goods can be standardized and thus each unit of good can be uniform.

Thus,

In terms of uniformity, the difference between services and goods is that because of high involvement on the part of a buyer, services tend to be unique, with the quality likely to vary, while the quality and variance from standards of goods can be corrected before purchase.

Hence, the correct answer is the option (B).