An integrative perspective of closeness in retailing: From retailers' sense-giving to consumers' sense-making

Proximity in marketing: An integrating theoretical framework and research agenda

“…Such contributions on proximity in turn have informed marketing studies of retail stores’ spatial locations (Rulence, 2003), cooperation in industrial contexts (Geldes et al, 2015), consumer–retailer relations (Hérault-Fournier et al, 2014; Schultz et al, 2016), people’s interactions with frontline employees (Bove and Johnson, 2001; Clauzel and Riché, 2015; Salerno, 2001) or other consumers (Brannon and Samper, 2018; Dion and Bonnin, 2004; Dubois et al, 2016; Tu et al, 2015) and evaluations of products and communication media (Kim et al, 2008; Merle et al, 2016; Willems et al, 2017).…”

“…Individual–organisation interactions, including brands and retail store chains (Gretry et al, 2017; Schultz et al, 2016; Sarkar and Sarkar, 2016);…”

“…It also makes it possible to consider the effects of interactions between entities (people, places and concrete objects), which often are considered to be more important than the effects of the characteristics of the entities themselves (Srivastava et al, 1984). The mobilisation of the concept of proximity thus highlights the existence of two-way relationships (Mende et al, 2013), as well as the effects of mutual influence, forms of interdependence (Salerno, 2001; Schultz et al, 2016), and possible asymmetry effects, the degree of proximity not being identical on both sides of the dyad (Schultz et al, 2016; Wilson et al, 2008). Proximity then invites a reading in terms of the power relationship between the actors of the dyad, one of the entities being able to seek proximity when the other may want to maintain distance during exchanges.…”

“…Although space mainly is understood from a physical point of view (Ganesan et al, 2005), an interaction may be located in social spaces (Mason and Chakrabarti, 2017). Schultz et al (2016) propose that proximity implies anchoring the interaction between actors in a socio-spatial environment. By inscribing them in time and space, interactions analysed according to proximity become situated and contextual, and the characteristics of this spatio-temporal inscription condition the emergence, reinforcement or weakening of proximity.…”

“…In parallel, academia increasingly leverages proximity-related theories in disciplinary fields ranging from economics (Craig et al, 2017), psychology (Min et al, 2018) and geography (Menzel, 2015) to sociology (Bissell, 2013). Marketing relies on proximity concepts to explain inter-organisational relations (Geldes et al, 2017), consumer–retailer links (Schultz et al, 2016) and inter-consumer relations (Brannon and Samper, 2018; Dubois et al, 2016). A common thread running across all these works is an objective to renew understanding of interactions between organisations and/or individuals, theoretically inscribing the concept of proximity in the field of relationship marketing (Morgan and Hunt, 1994).…”