Intangibility is used in marketing

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

 to describe the inability to assess the value gained from engaging in an activity using any tangible evidence. It is often used to describe services where there isn't a tangible product that the customer can purchase, that can be seen, tasted or touched.

Other key characteristics of services include perishability

Perishability

Perishability is used in marketing to describe the way in which service capacity cannot be stored for sale in the future. It is a key concept of services marketing.Other key characteristics of services include intangibility, inseparability and variability....

, inseparability and variability

Variability

The term variability, "the state or characteristic of being variable", describes how spread out or closely clustered a set of data is. This may be applied to many different subjects:*Climate variability...

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Marketing Implications

When a customer is buying a services, he perceives a risk related to the purchase. In order to reassure the buyer and build his confidence, marketing strategists need to give tangible proofs of service quality. Because of service intangibility, consumers are less likely to switch brands or try new ones.