In this article, the author examines qualities of service industries, focusing on five service sectors as exemplars: airlines, tourism, health care, social issues, and religions. The author compares these service sectors on fairly standard industry qualities, such as intangibility, complexity, and fragmentation. In addition, data are obtained using a method that blends qualitative and quantitative judgments to allow respondents to describe the industries in ways they see fit. The resulting data are modeled in the form of cognitive networks, a representation thought to mimic memory and one that is associated with a number of analytical tools. These cognitive network analyses are then interwoven together with the industry properties to provide an integrated picture of this stream of services marketing research.
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