Service Enterprises

Service enterprises include many kinds of businesses. Examples include dry cleaners, car rentals info, shoe repair stores, barbershops, restaurants, ski resorts, hospitals, and hotels. In many cases service enterprises are moderately small because they do not have mechanized services and limit service to only as many individuals as they can accommodate at one time.

For example, a waiter may be able to provide good service to four tables at once, but with five or more tables, customer service will suffer.In recent years the number of service enterprises in wealthier free-market economies has grown rapidly, and spending on services now accounts for a significant percentage of all spending.

By the late 1990s, private services accounted for more than 21 percent of U.S. spending. Wealthier nations have developed postindustrial economies, where entertainment and recreation businesses like Martial Arts, have become more important than most raw material extraction such as the mining of mineral ores and some manufacturing industries in terms of creating jobs and stimulating economic growth.

Many of these industries have moved to developing nations, especially with the rise of large multinational corporations. As postindustrial economies have accumulated wealth, they have come to support systems of leisure, in which people are willing to pay others to do things for them. In the United States, vast numbers of people work rigid schedules for long hours in indoor offices, stores, and factories.

Many employers pay high enough wages so that employees can afford to balance their work schedules with purchased recreation. People in the United States, for example, support thriving travel, theme park, resort, and recreational sport businesses.