Perishability Perishable goods refer to products and services that have an expiration date. Services, like foods, are perishable, meaning that services can not be stored for later use. Foods may go bad if they are not consumed in a certain period, the same applies to some services. Movie tickets, theater reservations, doctor’s appointments, and hotel bookings can not be stored or kept for later use. When left unused, the service vanishes, and a new ticket or another reservation will need to be made.
There are several steps that businesses can take to adjust the demand and supply of their services. For example, hotel rates for the same room will vary depending on peak season or off-peak. Part-time employees may be hired during the peak season to share the workload and serve more tourists.
25. Write about “Crowdsourcing”, share two different examples.
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digital platforms to attract and divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. Crowdsourcing is not limited to online activity, however, and there are various historical examples of crowdsourcing. The word crowdsourcing is a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing".In contrast to outsourcing, crowdsourcing usually involves less specific and more public groups of participants.
Advantages of using crowdsourcing include lowered costs, improved speed, improved quality, increased flexibility, and/or increased scalability of the work, as well as promoting diversity. Crowdsourcing methods include competitions, virtual labor markets, open online collaboration and data donation. Some forms of crowdsourcing, such as in "idea competitions" or "innovation contests" provide ways for organizations to learn beyond the "base of minds" provided by their employees (e.g. LEGO Ideas).[12][13][promotion?] Commercial platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, match microtasks submitted by requesters to workers who perform them.
Example Companies that need some jobs done only on occasions, such as coding or graphic design, can crowdsource those tasks and avoid the expense of a full-time in-house employee.
While crowdsourcing often involves breaking up a big job, businesses sometimes use crowdsourcing to assess how multiple people perform at the same job. For instance, if a company wants a new logo, it can have dozens of graphic designers assemble samples for a small fee. The company can then pick a favorite and pay for a more complete logo package.