Products and Services—Strangers or Siamese Twins?

Services are becoming complex with ever-shifting customer expectations and technological advancements. Consumers are moving away from the liability of owning a solution to fulfilling needs through contractual access to the benefits of a solution. Sharing economy and newer business models such as service platforms exemplified by the popularity of Uber and Rentomojo are becoming more common. Hence, products must incorporate features, modes of interactions, and technological elements that will provide rightful access to the benefits. In view of the dynamics between products and services, it is necessary to investigate which characteristics individually and together that make product service systems desirable and memorable for the users. Through existing literature, we came up with an exhaustive list of the service and product characteristics. Later using two case studies, we mapped these characteristics to prepare a comparison. We suggest answers to questions such as “Is only the intangibility of services a primary differentiator to products?” and “What product characteristics can be realized through services?”