Products and services in new economic forms

Prior research in marketing and strategy has noted that products and services have begun to increasingly resemble each other. While it is undeniable that they have always possessed a certain degree of both tangible and intangible characteristics, we see today acceleration in the rate at which products and services are converging. This is especially noticeable in new economic forms such as the access economy and on-demand services. In this paper, we argue that these changes are due to the fact that the exchange of both products and services now occurs primarily on digital platforms. Since the design of these systems stem from the same social, cultural, and technological milieu, the practice enacted by the actors perpetuates similar inherited structure. Using a practice-based lens, we show how products have dematerialized due to an abstraction of ownership and increased value of intangible benefits. We also portray how, on the other hand, the materiality of on-demand services has become more prominent due to the homogenization of experience and tangibility of value. We argue that our conclusions only represent the surface of the complex web of mechanisms underlying contemporary economic activity. We conclude by providing directions for future work, especially in empirical investigations.