Albert Abelló: Understanding Service Businesses. Applying Principles of the Unified Services Theory (UST)

The purpose of the Unified Services Theory (UST) has been to provide a basis of common principles pertaining to diverse “service businesses”. In essence, the UST states that “services are production processes in which each customer provides significant elements which are essential inputs for production”.
Customers are therefore “suppliers” to all service businesses. This compares to non-service processes in which production can and does occur independent of customers. The key element of service production is that it, of necessity, involves customer interaction (as defined below). From this basics, we will ellaborate on different common sense statements.