Book: Fundamentals of Human Geography | Unit-III | Chapter 6
Tertiary and Quaternary Activities
1. Learning Objectives
After reading these notes, you will be able to:
1
Understand tertiary activities and their types — trade, transport, communication and services.2
Know about tourism as the world’s largest tertiary activity.3
Understand quaternary and quinary activities and outsourcing.4
Know the concept of the digital divide.2. Tertiary Activities
Tertiary activities are related to the service sector. Manpower is an important component, as most tertiary activities are performed by skilled labour, professionally trained experts and consultants (health, education, law, governance, recreation).
- In the initial stages of economic development, a larger proportion of people work in the primary sector. In a developed economy, the majority get employment in tertiary activity, with a moderate proportion in the secondary sector.
- Tertiary activities involve both production (provision of services that are consumed, output measured via wages/salaries) and exchange (trade, transport, communication to overcome distance).
- They involve the commercial output of services rather than tangible goods, and are not directly involved in processing physical raw materials — examples: plumber, electrician, barber, shopkeeper, teacher, doctor, lawyer, publisher.
- Key difference from secondary activities: tertiary expertise relies more on specialised skills, experience and knowledge rather than production techniques/machinery.
3. Types of Tertiary Activities
🛒 Trade and Commerce
- Trade is essentially buying and selling of items produced elsewhere, intended for profit; towns/cities where this happens are trading centres.
- Rural marketing centres: Quasi-urban, cater to nearby settlements; rudimentary services; have mandis (wholesale markets) and retailing areas.
- Periodic markets: Found where no regular markets exist; weekly/bi-weekly, held on specified dates, moving from place to place.
- Urban marketing centres: Widely specialised services — labour, housing markets, professionals (teachers, lawyers, physicians, dentists, vets).
- Retail trading: Sale of goods directly to consumers, mostly in fixed establishments; non-store retail includes street peddling, handcarts, mail-order, telephone, vending machines, internet.
- Wholesale trading: Bulk business through intermediary merchants/supply houses, not through retail stores; wholesalers often extend credit to retailers.
📌 Store Types
Consumer cooperatives — first large-scale retail innovation. Departmental stores — delegated purchasing/sales authority to department heads. Chain stores — buy merchandise economically, often directing manufacturing to specification.🚚 Transport
- A service/facility for physically carrying people, materials and goods from one location to another; value of material is enhanced at every stage by transportation.
- Distance measures: km distance (route length), time distance (travel time), cost distance (expense).
- Network & Accessibility: A node is a meeting point of routes/origin/destination; a link is every road joining two nodes. A developed network has many links = well-connected places.
- Factors affecting transport: Demand (influenced by population size); Routes (depend on location of cities/towns, trade pattern, landscape, climate, funds).
📡 Communication
- Involves transmission of words, messages, facts and ideas; earlier dependent on transport (hand, animal, boat, road, rail, air — hence “lines of communication”).
- Telecommunications: Revolutionised speed of messaging — from weeks to minutes; mobile telephony made communication direct/instantaneous.
- Mass media: Radio and television relay news/entertainment to vast audiences; newspapers cover global events; satellite communication and the internet have revolutionised global communication.
🛎️ Services
- Occur at many levels — geared to industry, people, or both. Low-order services (grocery, laundry) are more common than high-order/specialised services (accountants, consultants, physicians).
- Many services are regulated by governments/companies — highways, fire departments, education, customer-care, transport, telecommunication, energy, water supply.
- Professional services: Health care, engineering, law, management. Recreational/entertainment services locate based on market (multiplexes near CBD; golf courses where land is cheaper).
- Personal services: Facilitate daily life — housekeepers, cooks, gardeners; often unskilled rural migrants, generally unorganised. Example: Mumbai’s dabbawala service serving ~1,75,000 customers.
4. Tourism — A Selected Example
Tourism is travel for recreation rather than business. It is the world’s single largest tertiary activity — 250 million registered jobs, 40% of total GDP. It fosters growth of infrastructure, retail trading and craft industries (souvenirs).
🎯 Tourist Attractions
- Climate: Warm sunny weather for beach holidays (Southern Europe, Mediterranean); snow cover for winter/skiing holidays.
- Landscape: Mountains, lakes, spectacular sea coasts and landscapes not fully altered by man.
- History and Art: Ancient/picturesque towns, archaeological sites, castles, palaces, churches.
- Culture and Economy: Ethnic/local customs; cheap-cost regions become popular — e.g., heritage-home stays in Goa, Madikere, Coorg.
📌 Medical Tourism
When medical treatment is combined with international tourism, it is called medical tourism. India has emerged as a leading medical tourism country, with world-class hospitals in metropolitan cities catering to patients globally — benefiting India, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Outsourcing of medical tests/data interpretation (radiology, MRI, ultrasound) is also growing.5. Quaternary and Quinary Activities
A CEO in Copenhagen, one in New York, and a medical transcriptionist in Bangalore all work in a knowledge-oriented segment of the service sector, divided into quaternary and quinary activities.
📊 Quaternary Activities
📌 Knowledge-Based Services
Involve collection, production and dissemination of information, centring around research and development — an advanced form of services involving specialised knowledge and technical skills. Over half of all workers in developed economies are in the “Knowledge Sector” — mutual fund managers, tax consultants, software developers, statisticians. Personnel in offices, schools, universities, hospitals, theatres, accounting/brokerage firms belong here. Quaternary activities can also be outsourced, not tied to resources or environment.🥇 Quinary Activities
📌 ‘Gold Collar’ Professions
The highest level of decision/policy makers. Focus on the creation, re-arrangement and interpretation of new and existing ideas; data interpretation and evaluation of new technologies. Represent special, highly paid skills of senior business executives, government officials, research scientists, financial and legal consultants. Their importance in advanced economies far outweighs their numbers.🌐 Outsourcing
- Outsourcing/contracting out gives work to an outside agency to improve efficiency and reduce costs. When work is transferred overseas, it is off-shoring (both terms are often used together).
- Outsourced activities: IT, human resources, customer support, call centres, and sometimes manufacturing/engineering.
- Call centres opened in India, China, Eastern Europe, Israel, Philippines, Costa Rica — countries with cheap, skilled, English-speaking workers.
- KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing): Distinct from BPO — involves highly skilled workers; information-driven. Examples: R&D, e-learning, business research, IP research, legal profession, banking.
- Home shoring: An alternative trend to outsourcing.
6. The Digital Divide
📌 Unequal ICT Access
Opportunities from Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based development are unevenly distributed across the globe due to economic, political and social differences. Developed countries have surged forward while developing countries have lagged behind — this gap is the digital divide. It also exists within countries — e.g., in India or Russia, metropolitan centres have better connectivity than peripheral rural areas.🎨 Colour-Collar Classification of Workers
| Colour of Collar | Nature of Work |
|---|---|
| Red | Primary activities (outdoor work — farming, mining, fishing) |
| Gold | Quinary activities (top decision-makers, policy formulators) |
| White | Professional/office-based tertiary and quaternary work |
| Grey | Research, technical and engineering-support roles |
| Blue | Secondary activities (factory/manual production work) |
| Pink | Personal/domestic service-oriented work |
Summary — Quick Revision
1
Tertiary Activities: Service sector — trade, transport, communication, services. Rely on skills/experience, not machinery.
2
Trade Types: Rural marketing centres, periodic markets, urban marketing centres; retail vs wholesale trading.
3
Transport: Measured by km/time/cost distance; networks made of nodes and links; demand depends on population size.
4
Communication: Telecommunications, mass media (radio/TV/newspapers), satellite, internet have revolutionised global communication.
5
Tourism: World’s largest tertiary activity (250 million jobs, 40% of GDP); attractions — climate, landscape, history/art, culture; includes medical tourism.
6
Quaternary Activities: Knowledge-based — collection/production/dissemination of information; R&D focused; can be outsourced.
7
Quinary Activities: “Gold collar” — top decision-makers, policy formulators, senior executives, consultants, scientists.
8
Outsourcing & Digital Divide: Off-shoring to cheap-labour countries (India, China, Philippines etc.); KPO vs BPO; unequal ICT access = digital divide.
Important Terms to Remember
- Tertiary Activities: Service-sector activities involving commercial output of services rather than tangible goods.
- Trading Centres: Towns/cities where buying and selling of goods produced elsewhere takes place.
- Periodic Markets: Local markets organised at specific temporal intervals (weekly/bi-weekly) in rural areas.
- Transport Network: Nodes (meeting/origin/destination points) joined by links (roads) forming a pattern.
- Isochrone Lines: Lines drawn on a map joining places equal in terms of time taken to reach them.
- Tourism: Travel undertaken for recreation rather than business; world’s largest tertiary activity.
- Medical Tourism: Combination of medical treatment with international tourism activity.
- Quaternary Activities: Knowledge-oriented services centred on research, development and information.
- Quinary Activities: Highest level decision-making/policy-making services; “gold collar” professions.
- Outsourcing: Giving work to an outside agency to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
- Off-shoring: Outsourcing work to overseas locations.
- KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing): Information-driven outsourcing involving highly skilled workers, distinct from BPO.
- Digital Divide: Uneven distribution of ICT access and benefits across/within countries.