Why is a consultant not a “vendor?”
It’s time to consider “services” to be “products,” at least where meetings and conferences are concerned. Wikipedia says "IBM treats its business as a service business. Although it still manufactures computers, it sees the physical goods as a small part of the "business solutions" industry. They have found that the price of demand for "business solutions" is much lower than for hardware. There has been a corresponding shift to a subscription pricing model. Rather than receiving a single payment for a piece of manufactured equipment, many manufacturers are now receiving a steady stream of revenue for ongoing contracts." The change is significant.