Inseparability is a term used in marketing to describe a key quality of services as distinct from goods, namely the characteristic that a service has which renders it impossible to divorce the supply or production of the service from its consumption.[1] Other key characteristics of services include perishability, intangibility and variability (or heterogeneity).[2]
Although the notion of inseparability has become received wisdom in the marketing and services marketing literature over the past few decades,[3] more recent research has challenged inseparability as a distinguishing characteristic of services.[4][5]
^Michael J. Thomas (1995), Gower Handbook of Marketing, p. 377, Gower Publishing Ltd. ISBN0-566-07441-9
^Zeithaml, Valarie A., A. Parasuraman, & Leonard L. Berry (1985). Problems and strategies in services marketing. Journal of Marketing, 49(2), 33-46.
^Betancourt, Roger & David Gautschi (2001), Product Innovation in Services: A Framework for Analysis, in Advertising and Differentiated Products, Vol. 10, M.R. Baye and J.P. Nelson, eds. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 155–183. ISBN978-0762308231
^Vargo, Stephen L. & Robert F. Lusch (2004), The four service marketing myths: Remnants of a goods-based, manufacturing model, Journal of Service Research, 7(2), 324–335.