1. Tertiary activities
Tertiary group provides services to people, like tourism, education,
healthcare, etc.
Characteristics:
• Heterogeneous: Variety of services, different qualification of workers
and size of the companies.
• Tertiary activities are intangible or immaterial. They need qualification
and personal effort in the workers to offer a service.
• The tertiary activities cannot be stored. We demand a service when we
need. Supply and demand are coordinated by the TICs.
• Tertiary activities must be close to consumers.
• The tertiary activities have a low level of mechanization. Many services
cannot be offered with machines.
• The world distribution of the tertiary activities is unequal. In some
countries 70 % of the labor force are tertiary workers, whereas in other
countries the percentage is 30 %.
Classification:
1. Social services: are the activities related to the administration,
education, healthcare, etc. Normally these services are offered by public
companies, but there also exist private social services.
2. Distribution services: are the activities related to free movement of
people, goods or information. Transport, telecommunications, trade, etc.
3. Services to companies: Some companies contract services from
others: administration, marketing, investigation, etc.
4. Services to consumers: hotel and catering business, leisure, repairs,
cleaning, etc.
Activities:
1- Why are tertiary activities heterogeneous? Give an example.
2- What are the differences between public and private services?
3- What are the social services?
4- Give two real examples of each group of services: social, distribution, to
companies and to consumers.