They will simply connect their portable microcomputers with built-in modems, via the telephone, to the expert provider. This is the any time, any place expert. Tangibility Increasingly the intangible component of products and services is increasing at the expense of the tangible component. What usually gives a product or service value, is its information content - its intangible aspect. The higher the knowledge content the more valuable the product is to the consumer or client.
Intangibility makes it difficult to locate the producer of the product or service in time or space.
The increasingly important factory of the future is represented by the software factory. This is only partly because it is in the central field of the new economy, information processing. The factory of intangibles, is the more likely candidate for the organizational model of the future. As our economy has become complex, the number of intermediaries in the chain between the consumer and the goods or services to be consumed has increased, each supposedly adding value by their contribution along the way. Disintermediation consists of any direct transaction or exchange of goods and services that bypasses a middleman, professional, specialist, or institution that is normally involved in such a transaction.