From geomarketing to spatial marketing

Geomarketing has become a critical domain for most of companies dealing with retailing and services for the three last decades. Usually, retail and service companies utilize geomarketing to make decisions about store location, trade area delineating, and customer plotting. Little by little new applications have emerged from mapping uses dealing with prices, merchandising, and promotion (advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, salesforce management). Spatial consumer behavior is now considered of paramount importance either within the store or outside as competition is sometimes growing fiercely in markets, on the one hand, and customers are more and more mobile, on the other hand. But the true revolution appears suddenly with smartphones and touch pads which enable to develop both a real mobile marketing (m-marketing) and location-based marketing. With this device, any consumer can be positioned anywhere, anytime to send him/her messages as she/he can keep informed about products and prices, and purchase opportunities; meanwhile, this consumer may either buy from anywhere or at any time. Mapping is no more the only way to manage decisions in a spatial context in marketing. Hence, many concepts should be considered or reconsidered: spatial commodity, ubiquity, proximity, and so on. And new methods emerge to better control space in markets and to be sure to keep in touch with customers even though this last intention should be limited for privacy reasons. That is the reason why geomarketing should be enlarged to spatial marketing.