Abstract
The characteristics that early scholars have given services to pinpoint to differences
towards goods (intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, perishability), were later criticized and
scholars discontinued using them, however, they were never replaced by broadly accepted
alternative criteria. Instead, literature has suggested to assign these characteristics to elements of
services and define a service as intangible performance promise, which requires heterogeneous
customer resources that are inseparable from the transformation process, whereas the service
provider capacity perished when these are not available.