ABSTRACT
Marketing has historically been entangled with the study of geography, which has become a very popular focus in the marketing literature nowadays. However, spatially-oriented perspectives in marketing tend to rest on a conceptual divide between place-oriented and space-oriented thinking, thus inhibiting the production of more eclectic and creative spatial knowledge. This conceptual paper endeavors to overcome this dichotomy by rethinking spatiality in terms of boundedness, openness, functionality and expressivity. These constitute the four cardinal points of a “compass rose” that marketers can use to reassess and combine different appreciations of spatiality. The paper suggests the idea of “sailing” as an appropriate metaphor to explore pioneering multidimensional appreciations of geography in marketing and go beyond the divide between place-oriented and space-oriented thinking.
7. Conclusion
The present paper has attempted to contribute to the literature that explores the relevance of geographical dimensions in marketing (Chatzidakis et al., 2014; Veresiu et al., 2014), by nuancing the conceptual opposition between place- and space-oriented thinking that is still dominant in extant literature. To achieve its goal, this paper has offered the metaphor of sailing as a conceptual device that can facilitate the development of innovative spatial thinking, thereby responding to MacInnis's (2011) emphasis on lack of conceptual thinking in marketing. Via the metaphor of sailing, this study has identified four main appreciations of spatiality in marketing research and proposed an alternative way of conceptualizing spatial knowledge in marketing by emphasizing the emergence of various eclectic combination of spatial perspectives. In particular, this attempt has endeavored to reconcile the varied and fragmented accounts of the geographical dimensions featured in the marketing literature that have resulted in divergent views on what spatiality is and how it can be investigated. The proposed “compass rose” has sought to shed light on the underlying research beliefs of scholars who have produced geographical accounts of marketing. In fact, before any type of geographical investigation can be initiated, researchers must first make a number of assumptions about what spatiality is and how it can be grasped. Furthermore, the use of the “compass rose” and the illustration of the three eclectic “courses” has shown that contemporary understandings of spatiality in social sciences can transcend rigid distinctions between different traditional approaches.
