Location-Based Marketing

2The Consumer’s Spatial Behavior

Any marketing approach must be preceded by an analysis of buyer behavior, which is the main driver of marketing systems (Alderson 1965). But this type of analysis too often remains “aspatial”. Introducing space into this approach is increasingly necessary in order to capture the consumer en route and thus make geomarketing more dynamic, because it is often too static and descriptive. This is all the more useful as changes in behavior in our societies impose new rules of the game (Levy 1996). It is therefore necessary to focus more on trajectories than territories (Golledge and Stimson 1997). After having defined and clarified the main concepts related to the consumer’s spatial behavior, Chapter 2 addresses the first “spatial” phase of this behavior (i.e. his movement to the point of sale or behavior outside the store), then the second phase (in this case, his or her movement within the point of sale or behavior in the store).

2.1. The main concepts of out-of-store spatial behavior

A spatial marketing approach must therefore also begin with an understanding of the spatial behavior of buyers and more specifically of consumers, this book being more focused on consumer marketing. Marketing researchers have focused on understanding why people buy (e.g. the famous article “Why do people shop?”, Tauber 1972), and how they buy. The “how they move to and through the point of sale” has been neglected, although it can help to answer at least part of these ...