TERTIARY AND QUATERNARY ACTIVITIES 

Tertiary Activities

Tertiary activities include both production (production of services that are consumed) and exchange. It involves the commercial output of services rather than the production of tangible goods.
They are not directly involved in the processing of physical raw materials. Common examples are the work of a plumber, electrician, technician, launderer, barber, shopkeeper, driver, cashier, teacher, doctor, lawyer and publisher etc.
The main difference between secondary activities and tertiary activities is that the expertise provided by services relies more heavily on specialised skills, experience and knowledge of the workers rather than on the production techniques, machinery and factory processes. 

Types of Tertiary Activities

There are four types of tertiary activities. They are trade, transport, communication and services. These include provision of services in exchange of payments.

1. Trade and Commerce

• The towns and cities where all these works take place are known as trading centres or collection and distribution points. Trading centres may be divided into rural and urban marketing centres.
• Rural Marketing Centres: These are quasi urban and cater to local needs and areas. Most of these have mandis (wholesale markets) and retail markets. In rural areas, there are periodic markets that may be weekly or bi-weekly and people from the nearby areas meet their demands. These markets are held on specified dates and shopkeepers move from one place to another.
• Urban Marketing Centres: These markets sell ordinary as well as specialised goods and services, e.g. markets for labour, housing, semi or finished products. Services of educational institutions and professionals like teachers, doctors, lawyers are available. 
• Retail Trading: In this type of trading, goods are directly sold to consumers. This trading is done through fixed establishments or stores, small shops, consumer cooperatives, big departmental stores and chain stores. The chain stores buy commodities in bulk and then hire skilled specialists for executive tasks. Street peddling, handcarts, trucks, door-to-door, mail order, telephone and Internet are examples of non-store retail trading.
• Wholesale Trading: Here bulk buying takes place directly from the manufacturer by numerous intermediary merchants. Wholesalers often extend credit to retail stores to such an extent that the retailer operates very largely on the wholesaler’s capital.
• Consumer cooperatives were the first of the large-scale innovations in retailing.
• Departmental stores delegate the responsibility and authority to departmental heads for purchasing of commodities and for overseeing the sale in different sections of the stores.
• Chain stores are able to purchase merchandise most economically, often goods to be manufactured to their specification. They employ highly skilled specialists. They experiment in one store and apply the results to many.

2. Transport

• Transport is a service or facility by which people, materials and manufactured goods are physically carried from one location to another.
• At every stage in this complex system, the value of the material is significantly enhanced by transportation.
• Isochrones lines are drawn on a map to join places equal in terms of the time taken to reach them.
• Factors affecting Transport:
• Demand : Transport depends on the size of population and standard of living of people. The larger the population size, the greater is the demand for transport.
• Route : It refers to the transport network depending on location of cities, towns, villages, industrial centres, availability of raw materials, nature of landscape, type of climate, availability of funds, etc. 
• Network : A network is a well developed transport system that is made up of nodes and links. A node is a meeting point of two or more routes and every road that joins any two nodes is called a link.

3. Communication

• Communication services involve the transmission of words and messages, facts and ideas. The development of transport facilitated communication as messages were carried by hand, animals, boat, road, rail and air.
• But new technology has made communication independent of transport, such as mobiles, telephony and satellites. Some of the communication services are:
• Telecommunications: The use of telecommunications is linked to the development of modern technology. It has revolutionized communications because of the speed with which messages are sent. The time reduced is from weeks to minutes.
• - Radio and television also help to relay news, pictures, and telephone calls to vast audiences around the world and hence they are termed as mass media. They are vital for advertising and entertainment. Newspapers are able to cover events in all corners of the world.
• - Satellite communication relays information of the earth and from space.
• - The internet has truly revolutionised the global communication system.

4. Services

There are different levels at which services are provided and availed. Some are meant for industry, some for people, and some for both industry and people i.e., transport. Services can be divided into three sub-categories. They are:

• Low Order Services: It includes common and widespread services like grocery shops, laundries, etc.
• Domestic Services: It includes housekeepers, cooks and gardeners which migrate from rural areas in search of employment. 
• High Order Services: These are specialised and less common like accountants, consultants and physicians. Some services are supervised and/or regulated by the government like making, maintaining highways, bridges, fire fighting departments, education, healthcare, etc.

Thus, services are present in organised sector that are government owned or big corporations. Some are present in unorganised sectors like low order and domestic services. E.g., Mumbai’s dabbawalla in India is one such service of the unorganised sector. 

People Engaged In Tertiary Activities

Today most people are service workers. Services are provided in all societies. But in more developed countries a higher percentage of workers is employed in providing services as compared to less developed countries. The trend in employment in this sector has been increasing, while it has remained unchanged or decreasing in the primary and secondary activities.

Tourism : Tourism is travel undertaken for purposes of recreation rather than business. It has become the world's single largest tertiary activity in total registered jobs (250 million) and total revenue(40 percent of the total GDP). Tourism fosters the growth of infrastructure industries, retail trading, and craft industries (souvenirs).

Tourist regions : The warmer places around the Mediterranean Coast and the West Coast of India are some of the popular tourist destinations in the world. Others include winter sports regions, found mainly in mountainous areas, and various scenic landscapes and national parks, which are scattered. Historic towns also attract tourists, because of the monument, heritage sites and cultural activities.

Factors affecting tourism : 

• Demand : Improvements in the standard of living and increased leisure time, permit many more people to go on holidays for leisure.
• Transport : The opening-up of tourist areas has been aided by improvement in transport facilities. The advent of package holidays has reduced the costs. 

Tourist Attractions: Tourist attractions are specific features of a place that attract people. These are as follows:

• Climate: In winter holidays, areas having warm sunny weather is preferred like beaches in Southern Europe, so it attracts more tourists there.
• Landscape: Mountains, lakes, spectacular sea coasts and landscapes not completely altered by man are good tourist attractions.
• History and Art: Ancient or picturesque towns, archaeological sites, historically important places having castles and palaces attract tourists.
• Culture and Economy: Areas having rich cultures attract people as they go there to experience ethnic and local customs. Places giving economic benefits are also attractions such as cheap homestays in Goa, Madikeri and Coorg in Karnataka.

Medical services for overseas patients in India

• India has emerged as the leading country of medical tourism in the world. World class hospitals located in metropolitan cities cater to patients all over the world. Medical tourism brings abundant benefits to developing countries like India, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.
• Beyond medical tourism, is the trend of outsourcing of medical tests and data interpretation. 
• Hospitals in India, Switzerland and Australia have been performing certain medical services- ranging from reading radiology images, to interpreting Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs) and ultrasound tests.
• When medical treatment is combined with international tourism activity, it lends itself to what is commonly known as medical tourism. 

Quaternary Activities

• Quaternary activities like the collection, production and dissemination of information or even the production of information.
• Quaternary activities centre around research, development and may be seen as an advanced form of services involving specialised knowledge and technical skills.  
• Software developers, mutual fund managers, doctors, accounting, brokerage firms are some examples of quaternary activities.
• They can be outsourced even as these are not tied to resources or affected by the environment or markets. This sector has replaced the primary and secondary sector and absorbs half of the population in developed economies.
• Quaternary sector: The highest level of decision makers or policy makers performs quinary activities. These are subtly different from the knowledge based industries that the quinary sector in general deals with.

Quaternary Activities

• The activities that are highly specific and specialised are placed under it. These include high level decision-makers, administrators, government officials, research scientists, etc. They are also known as gold collar professions.
• Outsourcing: It means contracting out or giving work to an outside agency to improve efficiency and to reduce cost. It is termed as off-shoring when work is transferred to an overseas location.
• Outsourcing provides employment in developing Countries of India, China, Botswana, etc. Information technology, human resources, customer support, call centres, data processing and other IT related services are examples of outsourcing.
• BPO: BPO stands for Business Process Outsourcing which involves customer support services, call centres and similar other processes. The developed countries transfer these jobs as overhead costs are much lower making it profitable to get job work carried out.
• KPO: KPO stands for a Knowledge Process Outsourcing which involves skilled workers and enables companies to create additional business opportunities, e.g. e-leaming, business research, etc.

The Digital Divide

• Opportunities emerging from the Information and Communication Technology based development are unevenly distributed across the globe. There are wide ranging economic, political and social differences among countries. 
• Countries' quick access to ICT and benefits to its citizens are the deciding factor. 
• While developed countries in general have surged forward, the developing countries have lagged behind and this is known as the digital divide.
• Similarly digital divides exist within countries. E.g., in a large country like India or Russia, it is inevitable that certain areas like metropolitan centres possess better connectivity and access to the digital world versus peripheral rural areas.   

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