ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the role and determinants of consumer services in the widest sense. Consumer services are seen as a broad category of services which are based on the concept of final consumption by private households and are purchased for ultimate use rather than as inputs into further production. The nature and quality of consumer services are also influenced by the emergence of new technologies. There are again two statistical sources which provide the base for reviewing the empirical evidence on consumer services in the broad sense: sectoral production and expenditures on consumer services. The rising share of service expenditure in nominal terms is mainly the result of the tendency for prices of consumer services to rise relative to those of consumer goods. The dose provider-consumer relationship in personal, health and recreational services implies fairly rigid constraints on time available for the consumption of final product services.
