The essence of this chapter for last-minute revision: definitions, key facts, trade and transport, services, tourism, quaternary/quinary activities, outsourcing and the digital divide, with named examples. The full notes, with the complete explanation, are available separately.
1 Seven definitions to learn
Tertiary activities are activities related to the service sector; they include both production (the “provision” of services that are “consumed”) and exchange (trade, transport and communication that overcome distance), and rely more on the specialised skills, experience and knowledge of workers than on machinery.
Retail trading is the sale of goods directly to consumers, mostly through fixed stores. Wholesale trading is bulk business through intermediary merchants and supply houses, not through retail stores.
A node is the meeting point of two or more routes, a point of origin, a point of destination, or any sizeable town along a route. A link is every road that joins two nodes. A network with many links is well-connected.
Quaternary activities involve the collection, production and dissemination of information, centred on research and development, requiring specialised knowledge and technical skills; they are not tied to resources, not affected by the environment and not necessarily localised by market, and, like some tertiary functions, can be outsourced.
Quinary activities are performed by the highest level of decision makers or policy makers; often called “gold collar” professions, they represent the special, highly paid skills of senior executives, government officials, research scientists, and financial/legal consultants.
Outsourcing is giving work to an outside agency to improve efficiency and reduce costs. When it involves transferring work to overseas locations, it is called off-shoring. KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) is distinct from BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) because it involves highly skilled workers.
The digital divide is the unequal distribution across the globe of the opportunities created by ICT-based development: developed countries have surged ahead while developing countries have lagged behind; it exists between AND within countries.
2 Trade and commerce: centres and stores
| Type | Key feature |
|---|---|
| Rural marketing centres | Quasi-urban; cater to nearby settlements; mandis and retailing areas; personal/professional services not well developed |
| Urban marketing centres | More widely specialised urban services; lawyers, physicians, dentists, veterinary doctors available |
| Periodic markets | No regular market in the area; weekly/bi-weekly; held on fixed dates, move from place to place |
| Consumer cooperatives | First large-scale innovation in retailing |
| Departmental stores | Delegate purchasing/sales authority to departmental heads |
| Chain stores | Purchase merchandise most economically; may direct goods to be manufactured to specification |
| Non-store retail trading | Street peddling, handcarts, trucks, door-to-door, mail-order, telephone, vending machines, internet |
| Wholesale trading | Bulk business through intermediaries; retailer often depends on wholesaler’s capital/credit |
3 Transport and communication
| Concept | Key fact |
|---|---|
| Three kinds of transport distance | Km distance, time distance, cost distance (isochrone lines join places of equal time distance) |
| Transport demand | Depends on population size: larger population, greater demand |
| Route determinants | Location of places, pattern of trade, landscape, climate, funds available |
| Why “lines of communication” | Messages were historically carried by hand, animals, boat, road, rail, air |
| Telecommunications | Cut message time from weeks to minutes; mobile telephony/satellites make communication independent of transport |
| Mass media | Radio and television relay news/pictures/calls to vast audiences |
4 Services: order and ownership
| Group | Feature / example |
|---|---|
| Low-order services | Common, widespread: grocery shops, laundries |
| High-order services | Specialised, less common: accountants, consultants, physicians |
| Government/company-regulated | Highways, bridges, fire-fighting, education, customer-care; corporations for transport/telecom/energy/water |
| Professional services | Health care, engineering, law, management |
| Recreational and entertainment services | Location depends on the market: multiplexes and restaurants within or near the CBD; a golf course where land costs are lower than in the CBD |
| Personal services | Unorganised, migrant, unskilled: Mumbai’s dabbawala (tiffin) service, ~1,75,000 customers |
5 Tourism and medical tourism
| Fact | Figure / example |
|---|---|
| Tourism’s scale | World’s single largest tertiary activity: 250 million registered jobs; total revenue 40 per cent of the total GDP |
| Tourist-attraction factors | Climate, landscape, history and art, culture and economy (home-stays: Goa, Madikere-Coorg) |
| Medical tourism | India is the world’s leading medical-tourism country; ~55,000 US patients in 2005 |
| Medical tourism beneficiaries | India, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia |
| Medical test outsourcing | India, Switzerland, Australia (radiology, MRI, ultrasound reading) |
6 Outsourcing, KPO/BPO and the digital divide
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Outsourcing call-centre countries | India, China, Eastern Europe, Israel, Philippines, Costa Rica |
| Reason outsourcing continues | Comparative advantage |
| KPO examples | R&D, e-learning, business research, IP research, legal profession, banking |
| Home-shoring | A new trend in quinary services, named as an alternative to outsourcing |
| GIS outsourcing example | Hyderabad/Manila company doing GIS work for the USA/Japan; Botswana benefits too despite low population |
| Digital divide within a country | India/Russia: metropolitan centres better connected than peripheral rural areas |
In-text activity: the chapter asks you to describe the work behind red, gold, white, grey, blue and pink collars. Red (Ch 4: primary-activity workers, named for their outdoor work) and gold (Ch 6: quinary, highly paid decision makers) are defined in the book; the other four are standard meanings: white = salaried office/professional work, grey = skilled technical work between white and blue, blue = manual labour, pink = service jobs traditionally associated with women.
7 Quick recap
- Tertiary = services (production + exchange); relies on skill, not machinery.
- Trade/commerce: rural vs urban marketing centres, periodic markets, retail vs wholesale.
- Transport: km/time/cost distance; nodes and links; demand depends on population.
- Communication: transmission of words/messages/facts/ideas; telecom cut weeks to minutes.
- Services: low-order vs high-order; government-regulated, professional, personal (dabbawala).
- Tourism: 250 million jobs, 40% of GDP; medical tourism led by India.
- Quaternary: information/R&D-centred. Quinary: highest-level decision makers, “gold collar”.
- Outsourcing/off-shoring; KPO (highly skilled) vs BPO; comparative advantage drives it.
- Digital divide: between AND within countries (e.g., India, Russia).