Location-Based Marketing

1Spatial Marketing and Geomarketing

The terms “spatial marketing” and “geomarketing” call for the following questions:

• – What is space?
• – Why introduce space in marketing in an almost systematic, if not systemic way?
• – Why expand the already vast field of geomarketing?

What is space? The recent French “yellow vest” crisis has shown how much making decisions without taking into account space or, as we now say, territories, can lead decision-makers to provoke reactions that are then very difficult to manage. Can we say that this “yellow vest” crisis invokes “geography is destiny”, as the American thriller writer James Ellroy likes to talk about? Making decisions today, either for private or public institutions without caring deeply about local issues can lead to a profound crisis. Everybody is not supposed to be mobile as expected.

Defining space and quickly understanding the consequences of these decisions on the “territories” for which we are responsible, whether at the level of a State or a company, are today prerequisites for good management of the organization for which we are responsible. However, the principle of subsidiarity (Martini and Spataro 2018) had been defined at the European level in the 1980s: “a central authority can only carry out tasks that cannot be carried out at a lower level” or “the responsibility for public action, when necessary, lies with the competent entity closest to those directly concerned by this action”, a recommendation that most companies ...