Inseparability

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. Other key characteristics of services include perishability, intangibility and variability (or heterogeneity).

Although the notion of inseparability has become received wisdom in the marketing and services marketing literature over the past few decades, more recent research has challenged inseparability as a distinguishing characteristic of services.