Question

How does product/service continuum apply to online dating sites?

(Marketing )

Answer 1

Product/ service continuum implies that the commodity or service in picture is a combination of tangible and intangible feature. Its not abiding to the extremes of products as being tangible or services as being intangible. A good example is a dinner at a restaurant. While the dinner is a commodity as it is delivering a tangible product, it also consists of provision of service such as the ambience, staff behavior and taste providing an intangible experience. Marketers need to understand all these domains for a product/ service offered while formulating their marketing strategies in order to ascertain which area of the product to target - the tangible or the intangible part.

In case of online dating sites, the application and web-site itself offers a tangible good. However, the experience from the beginning to logging in, quality of prospective matches, final matches and experience of interacting with participants to the site involves intangibility in experience. Hence, online dating falls in the middle of the product/ service continuum. Thus online dating is a product that is essentially characteristic of a service due to the degree of intangibility involved that is essential for the customer while consuming this product.