The tertiary sector also known as the service sector is responsible for offering goods, products or services to the population, which in a large majority of cases of the secondary sector through the manipulation of the raw material generated in the primary sector, all with the intention of satisfying your needs.
This definition of the tertiary sector also provides us with information about the type of activities it will perform and how it will do it. In other words, the tertiary sector is the consumer sector, the sector traditionally typical of developed countries.
The characteristics of the tertiary sector
The purpose of the tertiary sector is to take charge of the evolution of a society. This in turn implies the development of the companies and direct work with the human capital. This factor together with consumption are the main hallmarks of this sector. Next, we will check what other characteristics the tertiary sector has and that define it equally:
- The tertiary sector must improve productivity in every way to improve all the services offered.
- Given the previous point, the tertiary sector has a public function by which it must provide services to society that can both guarantee its integrity in the legal and juridical sense as well as in the sense more linked to leisure.
- The tertiary sector is the one that watches over welfare.
Tertiary sector activities
The tertiary sector is the commerce and tourism sector, these are perhaps its two most relevant activities. Apart from them, we find all financial activities, which are related to the economy, such as management of the stock market.
Communication-related activities are also important, especially transportation, which ultimately forms part of the set of resources that are endowed to citizens to contribute to their quality of life. One of these cases is that of ICT and the media and everything that has to do with cultural and leisure activities, as well as educational ones.
The impact of the tertiary sector
Much has been said about the outsourcing of society, well in this context we find the strong impact of the tertiary sector for the economy and for society.
One of the negative aspects of the tertiary sector that has aroused the most criticism is its strong impact on the environment, especially for ending the natural landscape due to the occupation of the land that it requires, from a commercial activity, to the development of transport, passing for tourism.