[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] Lovelock and Gummesson (2004, p. 29) conceptually argue that "there is a large group of separable services that do not involve the customer directly, with the result that production and consumption need not be simultaneous".
[6] Examples of such separated services include freight transportation, dry cleaning, and routine maintenance on a wide array of equipment and facilities.
Lovelock and Gummesson (2004) conclude that only one category of services — physical acts to customers' bodies, such as a haircut or medical examination — is inseparate.