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Where Business Meets Location Intelligence: A Bibliometric Analysis of Geomarketing Research in Retail

ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2025, 14(8), 282; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi14080282

by Cristiana Tudor

, Aura Girlovan^*

and Cosmin-Alin Botoroga

Reviewer 1:

Francisco Núñez

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3:

Stylianos Hadjipetrou

Reviewer 4:

Marco Painho

ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2025, 14(8), 282; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi14080282

Submission received: 31 March 2025 / Revised: 16 July 2025 / Accepted: 16 July 2025 / Published: 22 July 2025

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is necessary to improve the figures resolution , they are hard to read and understand.

The analysis is well documented, the information is enough and the conclusions are supported

Author Response

Comment 1. It is necessary to improve the figures resolution , they are hard to read and understand.

Response to Comment 1. Thank you for this helpful feedback. We have regenerated all figures in high resolution, ensuring that axis labels, legends, and data points are clear and legible. Furthermore, each figure has been renumbered consistently, and the high-resolution versions have been submitted to the journal’s production team. Once published, readers will have access to these improved figures in their full resolution.

Comment 2. The analysis is well documented, the information is enough and the conclusions are supported

Response to Comment 2. Thank you for your positive feedback. We are pleased that the methodology, data presentation, and conclusions meet your expectations. We believe these strengths enhance the clarity and impact of our study.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Congratulations to the authors on this thorough and comprehensive study, which undoubtedly represents a valuable contribution to the field. To further enhance the formal aspects of the manuscript and ensure that its argumentative structure is clearly and effectively articulated from the outset, several major revisions are recommended. These suggestions do not alter the core content of the work—specifically, the methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions—but are necessary to maximise its scientific and academic impact, facilitate a more critical reading of its contributions, and broaden its accessibility to readers beyond experts in the field. All comments are offered in a constructive spirit, with the conviction that, once addressed, the manuscript will be well-positioned for publication.

Detailed comments are included for review.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We sincerely thank you for your positive assessment and for the guidance on strengthening the manuscript’s academic rigour. We have carefully revised the formal and argumentative structure of the manuscript to make its logic and contributions clearer from the outset, without altering the core content. Below is our point-by-point response.

Abstract.

Comment 1: The abstract is generally well constructed; however, it lacks an introductory paragraph that provides the necessary context from which the study originates. In its current form, it begins directly with the objective, without first situating the reader within the underlying problem and the gap in the existing literature. Although this contextualisation is well developed later in the introduction, it should also be clearly stated from the outset in the abstract.

To address this, the inclusion of a brief paragraph introducing the study’s background is recommended. For instance: e.g. "In the context of increasing digitalisation and technological transformation of the retail sector, geomarketing has emerged as a strategic approach that combines spatial and demographic data to optimise marketing decision-making. Nevertheless, the degree of integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into academic marketing literature remains uncertain."

Such an addition would anchor the study’s objective within a clear problem/opportunity framework, while also implicitly suggesting the underlying research hypothesis.

Response to comment 1: We sincerely thank the reviewer for this insightful suggestion. To address this, we have introduced the abstract with a contextualizing paragraph that clearly anchors our research within a contemporary retail environment shaped by digitalization and highlights the existing gap concerning GIS integration in academic marketing literature. This addition appears at the very beginning of the revised abstract (lines 1–2), immediately framing our bibliometric objectives within the identified problem–opportunity window, as follows:

„In an era where digitalisation and omnichannel strategies profoundly reshape retail environments, precise spatial analytics provided by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can offer significant competitive advantages. Yet, despite clear practical benefits for targeting and operational effectiveness, the extent and manner of GIS integration into academic marketing literature remain uncertain. Clarifying this uncertainty is crucial for enhancing theoretical understanding and ensuring retail strategies fully leverage robust, data-driven spatial intelligence.”

Introduction

Comment 2: The introduction successfully contextualises the origins of the study’s objectives, outlines the methodology to be employed, and briefly summarises the expected results and their intended contribution.

However, it is concerning that no explicit research hypothesis is articulated from which a guiding research question could emerge. While for experts in the field, such as the authors and reviewers, it is relatively straightforward to infer a hypothesis indirectly—for example, "Nevertheless, the degree of integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into academic marketing literature remains uncertain, despite advancements in geospatial information technologies"—making it explicit would significantly enhance the study's coherence.

This aspect is essential for strengthening the bibliometric investigation’s internal consistency, ensuring a clear alignment between the stated objectives and the methodology applied to achieve them.

In the same vein, it is recommended that the authors clearly define the target audience and the substantive contributions the research intends to make. For instance, who would concretely benefit from this investigation? It remains unclear whether the study is aimed at: academics in marketing and geography, retail or data analytics professionals, developers of GIS/SDSS systems, or policymakers involved in urban and commercial planning.

Although these target groups are alluded to in subsequent sections of the article, they should be explicitly stated from the beginning to better orient the reader.

Additionally, the introduction would benefit from a concluding paragraph that serves as a bridge to the main body of the article, clearly outlining the structure and ensuring smooth transitions between sections.

Response to comment 2: We thank the reviewer for these constructive suggestions. In response, we explicitly articulated our central hypothesis and delineated our target audiences and specific contributions. We added a roadmap paragraph to enhance readability and transition smoothly into subsequent sections. The enhanced text now reads:

“Despite its transformative promise, the degree of integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into mainstream marketing scholarship remains uncertain, particularly given recent advances in AI, big data, and omnichannel retail that have heightened demand for spatially granular insights (Torrens, 2022). Addressing this uncertainty is essential, as continuing ambiguity regarding GIS's role in marketing research risks impairing strategic agility and competitive effectiveness in an increasingly spatially driven retail landscape. Our study directly tackles this gap through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 4,952 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2025, explicitly testing whether GIS concepts have organically permeated mainstream marketing thought or remain isolated in specialized niches.

Our findings serve four distinct yet interconnected stakeholder groups: marketing academics benefit from clearly identified research gaps for advancing spatial analytics in scholarly discourse; retail planners gain insights into under-exploited opportunities for location-based marketing innovations; GIS and Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) developers receive guidance toward strategically valuable thematic areas to direct technological advancements; and policymakers involved in urban and commercial planning acquire actionable intelligence to embed spatial considerations more systematically within commercial and sustainability policy frameworks.

The paper contributes to existing knowledge in three key ways:

It charts the evolution of geomarketing concepts in retail over the past 25 years, providing marketing scholars with a comprehensive thematic overview of spatial analytics adoption.
It identifies influential authors, institutions, and thematic clusters shaping geomarketing literature, offering GIS/SDSS developers and data analytics professionals strategic insights into promising innovation areas.
It highlights under-researched themes explicitly, offering policymakers and retail strategists clear, actionable directions to integrate spatial intelligence more systematically into their decision-making processes.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: Section 3 details our bibliometric approach with explanations of materials and methods we employ in our study; Section 4 presents our results; Section 5 discusses practical and theoretical implications; and Section 6 concludes with recommendations to advance GIS integration in retail marketing research.”

Background and Literature Review

Comment 3: The historical evolution is generally well presented. However, it is recommended to specify, at least broadly, the decades during which transitions between different industrial stages occurred. While these shifts can be inferred from the text, explicitly stating them would enhance clarity for the reader. Additionally, incorporating a graphical element, such as a timeline, could further aid comprehension.

The differentiation between GIS and geomarketing is clearly articulated, as are the final paragraphs that highlight the identified gap in the literature. In this regard, the study appropriately addresses its intended target audience and the contributions it seeks to make.

Notably, the gap identified in the literature could effectively serve as the basis for formulating a research hypothesis, thereby justifying the study's objectives with greater conceptual strength.

It is also recommended to include, at the end of section 2.1, a transition sentence that previews the content of section 2.2. This would facilitate logical continuity between the discussion of retail's conceptual evolution and the subsequent analysis of methodological advances in the application of geomarketing.

Response to comment 3: We thank the reviewer for the suggestion to clarify the chronology and improve the readability of Section 2.1 and fully agree on the importance of these issues. In response, we have added parenthetical date ranges to each “Industry X.0” stage: "Clearly delineating the industrial and retail revolutions via an explicit timeline not only enhances historical clarity but also critically highlights discrepancies in the adoption of specific technologies such as GIS. Unlike AI or Big Data, which rapidly gained traction, GIS methodologies remain curiously peripheral in marketing academia, signaling deeper structural or epistemological barriers that warrant systematic investigation. Starting in the 18th century, industrial revolutions led to significant changes in the manufacturing business and retail sectors. The advent of steam engines and mass production during Industry 1.0 (1760-1830) led to the emergence of department stores. The development of Industry 2.0 (1870-1920) brought about electrification and assembly lines. The third Industrial Revolution transformed shopping through the development of electronics and telecommunications and the establishment of e-commerce, which expanded retail to a global scale (1950-2000). Industry 4.0 (2010-2020) combines AI, IoT, Cloud Computing, and Big Data to create personalized marketing and smarter supply chains while providing seamless customer experiences (Groumpos, 2021). Industry 5.0 makes retail human-centered and sustainable (2020-present)”, thereby making the timing of each phase explicit. We also created Figure 1, a horizontal timeline that maps each retail era (Retail 1.0–5.0) to its date range and key technologies, providing a concise graphical summary that complements the text.

“Most recently, Retail 5.0 integrates AI with a human-centric focus, designing sustainable supply chains, transparent data practices, and customer experiences that balance commercial success with consumer well-being and environmental responsibility (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Timeline of Retail and Technological Transformations. Source: Visualization created by the authors.”

We thank the reviewer for emphasizing the importance of an explicit research hypothesis. In response, we have now clearly articulated our central hypothesis in 2.1. Section:

“Given the increasing relevance of spatial analytics in retail, the extent to which Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been conceptually integrated into academic marketing literature remains uncertain. This study investigates whether GIS-related concepts emerge as prominent thematic elements within retail-geomarketing publications.”

This formulation frames our bibliometric investigation as a direct response to a well-defined but unresolved issue in the literature, and it is consistently referenced throughout the Methods (Section 3) and Results (Section 5) as the basis for our analysis and interpretation.

Finally, to reinforce narrative cohesion, we added a bridging sentence at the end of Section 2.1 to guide readers smoothly into the next section:

“With retail’s evolution now established, Section 2.2 examines the methodological innovations driving geomarketing applications.”

Comment 4: The subsection 2.2 is very well developed, providing specific examples of geomarketing applications in the scientific literature, which effectively supports the justification for the identified research gap.

However, an explicit connection to the principal gap is still missing. Although methodological advances are illustrated, a crucial question remains insufficiently addressed: for instance, why, despite the existence of these studies, does geomarketing remain marginal within mainstream marketing literature? Inserting a sentence that explicitly contrasts the presence of applied studies with the ongoing scarcity of broader bibliometric recognition would have strengthened the logical closure of the subsection.

It is therefore recommended to reinforce the explicit connection between the examples provided and the identified gap, clarifying why, despite existing applications, GIS and geomarketing have not yet attained a central position within the marketing research agenda. This issue begins to be addressed more clearly later in the discussion of the results….

It is suggested to include a visual representation or categorisation of the methodological approaches employed in previous studies. For instance, a simple table listing the studies, the methods applied, and their specific areas of application would have enhanced the educational impact of the section, providing greater clarity on the methodological advances achieved as well as the hypothetical gaps this bibliometric review seeks to address.

Response to comment 4: We thank the reviewer and fully agree that a concise tabular summary enhances the transparency and educational value of Section 2.2. Accordingly, we have included Table 2 in the revised manuscript to synthesize representative methodological approaches from the literature, along with their application domains. This visual summary clarifies the diversity and sophistication of geomarketing techniques already present in empirical studies:

*Study*	*Methods Applied*	*Application Domain*
*Teller & Schnedlitz (2012)*	Survey of 217 shopping-mall managers; exploratory factor analysis (Principal Component Analysis) to extract underlying agglomeration drivers; computation of weighted impact indices; paired-samples and independent-samples t-tests to compare driver effects and test moderating variables.	Quantifying how location, tenant mix, marketing, and management factors drive agglomeration effects in retail
*Roig‐Tierno et al. (2013)*	GIS for geodemand & geocompetition layers; Kernel‐density analysis to identify candidate sites; analytical hierarchy process for multi‐criteria ranking of those sites.	Retail site‐location decision (supermarket in Murcia, Spain)
*Efentakis et al. (2013)*	Live traffic isochrone computation using floating car data and map-matching; dynamic catchment‐area analysis; overlay of time‐varying isochrones with demographic data.	Real‐time reachability and consumer accessibility for retail site‐selection and service planning
*Baviera‐Puig et al. (2016)*	GIS‐driven Huff (spatial interaction) model; geocompetition index via kernel density; isochrone-based catchment area analysis.	Network planning and site‐selection strategies for supermarkets in Spain
*Ramadani et al. (2018)*	Cross-sectional survey of 181 small and medium restaurant operators; Pearson correlation analysis; hierarchical regression to test the impact of business choice and location determinants on firm success	Assessing how geomarketing-related location decisions influence SME performance in Uganda
*Tsakiridi, A. (2021)*	Systematic literature review following PRISMA; categorization of 120 SCM articles by GIS capability (facility location, network optimization, inventory visualization)	Mapping GIS contributions to supply-chain decision making, including cost minimization, facility siting, network configuration, and inventory control
*Skoutas et al. (2021)*	Problem formulation for mixture‐based region search with cohesion/completeness constraints; anytime heuristic search using R‐tree–backed spatial pruning	Discovering arbitrarily shaped high‐mixture regions in geospatial point data (hotspot/coldspot analysis)
*McGuirt et al. (2022)*	GIS‐based assessment of store accessibility (network‐distance measures); customer surveys on shopping patterns and dietary behaviors; multivariate regression analysis to test associations between accessibility and behaviors.	Linking small food store accessibility to customer shopping frequency and dietary intake

To address your request for a stronger connection to the principal research gap, we now conclude Section 2.2 by briefly acknowledging the apparent paradox: despite the demonstrated utility of these spatial methods, they have not yet led to the integration of geomarketing as a mainstream construct within marketing theory. We intentionally limit this discussion here to avoid redundancy, as a full analytical reflection on this disconnection is now provided in detail in Section 5 and is fully addressed in our response to Comment 5.

This structure preserves clarity and logical flow: Section 2.2 focuses on mapping the methodological landscape, while Section 5 engages with the deeper epistemological and institutional factors that explain why geomarketing remains peripheral. We believe this delineation makes both sections more coherent and analytically robust.

This is the newly added final paragraph for Section 2.2 that acknowledges the conceptual gap:

“Taken together, the applied studies reviewed in this section illustrate a diverse and technically mature body of geomarketing work, encompassing sophisticated methods such as isochrone-based accessibility mapping, kernel-density geocompetition analysis, and hierarchical regression applied to location choice. These contributions demonstrate that GIS has long been capable of supporting strategic decisions in retail, logistics, and consumer behavior modeling. However, the apparent richness and methodological depth of these studies contrasts with the continued perception of geomarketing as a peripheral theme in mainstream marketing research. This apparent disconnection invites a deeper reflection, which we take up explicitly in Section 5, where we analyze the structural, disciplinary, and epistemological barriers that may explain the limited theoretical uptake of spatial methods within the academic marketing canon.”

Comment 5: Furthermore, in order to be considered for publication, it is strongly recommended to incorporate a critical reflection on why, despite these contributions, geomarketing remains a peripheral topic within mainstream scientific literature.

Potential questions that could guide this reflection include: Could it be that the predominant use of geomarketing in the private sector limits its perceived scientific relevance, thus reducing incentives for academic advancement? Or might it be that its application in social contexts is not deemed as impactful as its role in profit maximisation strategies for firms?

Addressing such questions would allow for a stronger justification of the study’s objectives and would underscore the necessity of a bibliometric review aimed at systematically exploring this disconnection.

Response to comment 5: We deeply appreciate the reviewer’s valuable suggestion. We added critical reflection that explicitly addresses why geomarketing has not yet gained widespread traction within mainstream marketing scholarship:

“Although geomarketing has generated sophisticated spatial‐analytic methods, these advances seldom translate into sustained visibility within core marketing literature. High implementation costs for software licenses and high-performance hardware, combined with the lack of faculty training, continue to hinder GIS and geomarketing integration into business and marketing educational programs (Bernhäuserová et al., 2022; Miller et al., 2006). Moreover, due to their application context, most geomarketing studies are published in practitioner-oriented or information systems venues rather than in leading marketing periodicals, so marketing scholars rarely see or cite them (Rynes et al., 2001). Furthermore, these studies often operate independently of core marketing theories such as the marketing mix or customer journey frameworks, reducing their resonance with theory-driven outlets (Libório et al., 2020). Unless these practical and epistemological barriers are addressed, the full conceptual integration of geomarketing into mainstream academic marketing may continue to lag behind its applied potential.”

Comment 6. In this context, returning to the importance of articulating a clear hypothesis or question: it is recommended that the authors explicitly formulate a central hypothesis that articulates the tension between the identified methodological advances and the apparent marginalisation of geomarketing within the scientific literature.

Such a formulation would strengthen the analytical dimension of the article and provide greater coherence between the theoretical framework, the study’s objectives, and the methodology employed to achieve them.

Achieving this would considerably enhance the robustness of the results, which are otherwise very well presented.

Response to comment 6: We thank the reviewer for advising us to articulate a clear, central focus that ties methodological advances to the broader issue of geomarketing’s academic visibility. In response, we have integrated a precise framing of this objective at the end of Section 2.2. Specifically, the concluding paragraph now acknowledges the paradox between the technical maturity of applied geomarketing studies and their limited conceptual integration into mainstream marketing theory. Thus, Section 2.2 concludes with a transitional paragraph (also discussed in our response to Comment 4) that introduces the need for deeper reflection, which we fully develop in Section 5.

Moreover, the central question that guides our bibliometric analysis, “To what extent have GIS and geomarketing-related concepts been conceptually integrated into mainstream marketing literature?”, is now explicitly formulated in Section 3 (Methodology) and revisited in Section 5 (Discussion). This structure avoids redundancy while ensuring that our analytical lens is visible throughout the study.

Methodology

Comment 7: The methodology section is generally well structured; however, it remains unclear what the ultimate purpose of the bibliometric mapping is, particularly in the absence of a guiding hypothesis. Without such a hypothesis, it becomes challenging for readers to fully grasp the investigative focus and the underlying rationale behind the study’s objectives. It is suggested that these aspects be carefully reconsidered. Nonetheless, the section demonstrates clear procedural design, technical rigour, transparency, and valuable technical contributions.

To strengthen the methodological framework, it is recommended to explicitly formulate an initial hypothesis or question that clearly articulates the relationship between the identified theoretical gap and the bibliometric analysis proposed and conducted. Doing so would better align the study's objectives, enhance the intentionality of the methodology, and facilitate a more critical and evaluative reading of the results.

Response to comment 7: Thank you for your thorough and constructive feedback. In response, we have strengthened our Materials and Methods section to clarify the analytical rationale underpinning our bibliometric design. Specifically, we now formulate the guiding research question as follows:

“To what extent have GIS and geomarketing-related concepts been conceptually integrated into mainstream marketing literature?”

This question directly reflects the study’s underlying motivation: to explore whether spatial technologies such as GIS emerge organically within the geomarketing knowledge base, or whether their role remains fragmented, implicit, or peripheral.

To preserve the objectivity of this inquiry, we deliberately chose not to include “GIS” as an explicit search term in our dataset construction. As we now clarify in the text:

“Although GIS was not explicitly included as a search term, our intent was to examine whether geospatial concepts naturally surface in geomarketing research literature. This deliberate omission allowed an unbiased assessment of the true extent of GIS integration within academic marketing discourse.”

Furthermore, we enhanced the explanation of our final analytical step, which connects the bibliometric mapping directly back to our core research question. The revised section states:

“In the final step, we took a closer look at what these patterns' implications are. We explored not just what’s been studied, but what’s been missed. A key focus was on whether GIS-related concepts made their way into keyword networks and thematic clusters or if they were absent altogether. That gave us a clear picture of how spatial technologies are, or aren't, being discussed in the context of geomarketing.”

These changes ensure that every methodological decision is aligned with the central inquiry of the study. By framing the analysis around conceptual emergence and visibility, rather than predefined inclusion, we provide a more evaluative lens through which to interpret the bibliometric results. Thank you for helping us achieve this.

Results and Discussion

Comment 8: The results are reproducible based on the details given in the methods section. Section 5.1 directly addresses the validation of a hypothesis. This relationship becomes increasingly evident throughout the discussion, this point is further supported by the discussion in Section 5.1 (The Inconsistent Use of GIS in Retail Research), where the authors revisit the identified research gap and contrast their findings with what the methodological literature appeared to suggest.

The authors clearly state that GIS remains marginal within marketing research, as mentioned in Section 2.2, the existence of relevant applied studies. This assertion is based directly on the empirical data presented in the results, effectively functioning as a validation of an implicit hypothesis, albeit one that was never explicitly formulated.

This evidences that, based on the excellent results obtained, the article effectively operates as a hypothesis-driven investigation—comparing an expected trend with the bibliometric reality. However, by not making this hypothesis explicit, the study misses an opportunity to structure its narrative with stronger argumentative clarity and to conduct critiques from a more objective standpoint (i.e., what the empirical data actually indicate about current practices).

Despite these limitations, the discussion is coherently structured as a well-developed argumentative progression—moving from the implicit validation of a hypothesis to the projection of practical applications and future research directions. This is further strengthened by Section 6, which appropriately addresses the study’s limitations.

Moreover, this section could be enriched by integrating some of the earlier comments and suggestions made regarding the theoretical framework (see Section 2).

It is therefore recommended that the logical structure—already present within the main body of the article—be reinforced from the outset by explicitly stating a hypothesis in the introduction. Doing so would help align the objectives, methodology, and discussion, thereby enhancing the overall coherence and argumentative clarity of the manuscript.

Response to comment 8: Thank you again for your thoughtful guidance. In response, we’ve explicitly tied our Discussion back to the study’s hypothesis and reframed the narrative to reflect the now clearly stated hypothesis concerning the uncertain role of GIS in mainstream marketing literature:

Findings Related to the Research Question

Thematic Gaps & Opportunities

“Our mapping revealed clear thematic blind spots. Despite Retail 4.0/5.0’s data-driven imperatives (Papanagnou et al., 2022), location-aware consumer decision models remain underdeveloped. The underrepresentation of GIS concepts may reflect multiple barriers: high implementation costs, lack of faculty training, publication in practitioner or IS outlets, and weak alignment with core marketing theory. Yet these gaps also highlight fertile ground: AI-driven personalization, omnichannel operations, and sustainability strategies could all be significantly enhanced through embedded spatial decision support.”

Managerial Policy Implications

“The limited conceptual prominence of GIS in academic marketing discourse mirrors missed opportunities in practice. Marketers and urban planners could leverage location intelligence to drive hyperlocal promotions, improve sustainable zoning, and optimize last-mile logistics (Guo & Cui, 2025; Li et al., 2019; Chumaidiyah et al., 2023). Rather than concluding marginality, our findings underscore the need for deliberate efforts—both theoretical and applied—to embed GIS more systematically into the marketing and retail strategy canon.”

These revisions ensure our discussion remains firmly anchored in the empirical findings, while also aligning with the revised hypothesis of GIS’s uncertain role. Rather than assuming marginality, we frame our analysis as an inquiry into GIS’s conceptual emergence within the field, which strengthens the coherence, neutrality, and forward-looking impact of the manuscript.

Conclusions

Comment 9. In summary, as reflected in the discussion and reiterated in the study’s conclusions, the article effectively operates as a validation of an implicit hypothesis: namely, that despite methodological advances in geomarketing, the integration of GIS into academic marketing research remains limited.

As the authors themselves acknowledge: “This study arose from the observation that, despite the growing significance of digital tools in retail strategy, the function of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) geomarketing is conceptually disjointed and insufficiently explored in mainstream marketing literature.”

Therefore, it is strongly suggested that this hypothesis be explicitly stated in the introduction section. Doing so would significantly enhance the argumentative coherence of the article and strengthen the alignment between the study's objectives, methodology, and discussion.

The authors are encouraged to consider these recommendations, as the manuscript is already highly interesting, innovative, and undoubtedly constitutes a valuable contribution. I look forward to reading an improved version in the near future.

Response to comment 9: We fully concur with the reviewer’s advice and are sincerely grateful for the thoughtful and constructive recommendations, which have significantly enhanced the coherence and scholarly rigor of our manuscript. In response, we now explicitly articulate our central research hypothesis in Section 2.1, framing it as an empirical question rather than a presupposed assertion:

This formulation preserves the exploratory nature of our investigation while grounding it in a testable, guiding question. Rather than assuming marginality, we treat GIS’s positioning as an open empirical issue to be confirmed or challenged by our bibliometric evidence.

The Introduction has been refined accordingly to establish this motivation: it emphasizes the uncertainty surrounding GIS’s role in academic marketing discourse and introduces the need for systematic examination. Meanwhile, the Methods section now explicitly justifies each procedural choice, including the intentional exclusion of “GIS” from the search string, as a means of assessing whether geospatial concepts emerge organically within keyword co-occurrences and thematic structures.

In the Discussion, we interpret the empirical absence of GIS-related terms in major keyword networks as evidence that, despite the technological relevance and methodological sophistication demonstrated in applied studies, GIS remains conceptually peripheral in marketing scholarship. This finding effectively validates our hypothesis of conceptual under-integration, now framed and presented transparently.

Finally, our Conclusion reflects this alignment between inquiry, evidence, and implications. It offers a concise synthesis that reaffirms the study’s contribution and articulates a call for more deliberate integration of spatial intelligence into marketing theory and practice.

Your feedback has been invaluable in ensuring that our manuscript offers not only strong empirical insights but also a structured and argumentatively coherent narrative. We believe the revised version now meets the highest standards of scholarly clarity and logical progression, and we are very grateful.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I consider this study to be a valuable contribution to the field. The objectives are clear and concise, and the structure of the text is coherent. However, some sections overlap and could be streamlined. I recommend minor revisions to this manuscript based on the general and specific comments provided in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Review of "Where Business Meets Location Intelligence: A bibliometric Analaysis of Geomarketing Research"

Comment 1. The authors present a thorough bibliometric analysis of geomarketing research, including, but not limited to, publication trends, knowledge structure, keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution, author and institutional contributions, and international collaborations. Results show that GIS and related terms are underrepresented in geomarketing research, despite the increasing availability of spatial data, digital tools, technological advancements, and the emergence of the Al era. The authors highlight this gap and emphasize the potential of geomarketing when incorporating GIS and Spatial Decision Support Systems into its process cycles. I consider this study to be a valuable contribution to the field. The objectives are clear and concise, and the structure of the text is coherent.

However, some sections overlap and could be streamlined. I would suggest minor revisions for this manuscript. Below are some general and specific comments that, in my opinion, need to be addressed.

Response to Comment 1: Thank you for your positive assessment and constructive feedback. We’re glad you found our bibliometric analysis comprehensive and our objectives clear. In response to your suggestion, we will carefully review the manuscript to identify and eliminate any overlapping content, consolidating similar discussions of thematic evolution and managerial implications, so that each section offers distinct insights.

General comments:

Comment 2. I believe the first part of the manuscript title, "Where Business Meets Location Intelligence:", could be omitted, as it does not add substantial value. "A Bibliometric Analysis of Geomarketing Research in Retail" already fully describes the scope and context of the study.

Response to Comment 2: Thank you for this suggestion. We agree that “A Bibliometric Analysis of Geomarketing Research in Retail” clearly conveys the study’s scope, but we’d like to retain the full title, “Where Business Meets Location Intelligence: A Bibliometric Analysis of Geomarketing Research in Retail.” The opening phrase serves as a contextual hook; it immediately signals the interdisciplinary nature of the work, inviting both marketing scholars and GIS experts to engage.

Comment 3. It would be helpful if the authors elaborated further in the introduction on the advantages of geomarketing compared to traditional marketing analysis. What are its strengths, and why is it particularly significant in the current landscape?

Response to Comment 3: Thank you for this insightful suggestion. We have expanded the Introduction to highlight the concrete advantages of geomarketing in retail: “Beyond its conceptual appeal, geomarketing delivers concrete advantages over more traditional, non-spatial marketing analyses that are characterized by pricing, consumer satisfaction, and performance analytics. By integrating demographic, transactional, mobility, and competitive data into a unified geographic framework, it uncovers customer clusters, catchment areas, and competitive overlaps that tabular reports can’t reveal (Birkin, et al., 2017; Sikos, et al., 2019; Li, et al., 2020). By mapping exactly how far people can travel in, for example, five or ten minutes by car (drive-time isochrones) or charting where they walk (pedestrian flow models), businesses can divide their market into more focused neighbourhoods (van den Berg, et al., 2018). In today’s retail landscape, where mobile-generated location data, IoT sensors, and omnichannel ecosystems are the norm, GIS-powered analytics is not just a “nice to have,” but a strategic imperative. Its real-time mapping of consumer movements and environmental factors equips firms to adapt instantly to shifting demand patterns, manage last-mile logistics more efficiently, and outmanoeuvre competitors in densely populated markets.”

Comment 4. Sections 1 and 2 of the manuscript lack a clear structure and logical flow. Although the section and subsection titles suggest distinct content, there is noticeable overlap between them (see specific comments below).

Response to Comment 4: Thank you for your in-depth analysis. We’ll gladly consider your suggestions.

Comment 5. Both the Introduction and the Materials and Methods sections are relatively brief and would benefit from further development. There is room to expand these parts to strengthen the overall narrative and context.

Response to Comment 5: We agree with the reviewer and have expanded these sections.

Comment 6. The sentence "This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of geomarketing research within the realm of retail marketing, emphasizing the significance and representation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)", as stated in the summary (lines 9-11 ), leads the reader to expect results related to GIS and related fields. However, GIS and associated terms are not present in the findings presented in the Results section.

Response to Comment 6: Thank you for pointing out this important inconsistency. We have revised both the Abstract and the framing in the main text to make our approach and our findings regarding GIS crystal clear:

Abstract revision:

“In an era where digitalization and omnichannel strategies profoundly reshape retail environments, precise spatial analytics provided by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can offer significant competitive advantages. Yet, despite clear practical benefits for targeting and operational effectiveness, the extent and manner of GIS integration into academic marketing literature remain uncertain. Clarifying this uncertainty is crucial for enhancing theoretical understanding and ensuring retail strategies fully leverage robust, data-driven spatial intelligence.”

Materials & Methods clarification:

“This study investigates the extent to which GIS and spatial concepts have been intel-lectually integrated into mainstream marketing literature. Our guiding research question is: To what extent do GIS and geomarketing-related concepts emerge as central or peripheral within the knowledge structure of retail marketing scholarship? This question motivated a bibliometric approach designed not to assume GIS’s presence, but to assess whether it surfaces organ-ically in conceptual clusters, author networks, and thematic keyword co-occurrences. To ensure this, we deliberately excluded “GIS” from our initial search string, allowing for an unbiased analysis of conceptual emergence. The methodology that follows details how we assembled, processed, and analyzed a large-scale bibliographic dataset to evaluate both thematic trends and structural visibility within geomarketing research.”

Discussion emphasis (Section 5.1):

Specific comments:

Comment 7. Lines 63-65: Although the introduction highlights a gap regarding the lack of spatial analysis and modelling in marketing, the authors also state that modern businesses already integrate spatial modelling to support decision-making and strengthen market positioning. This seems contradictory- please clarify and elaborate on how these two perspectives coexist.

Response to Comment 7: Thank you for raising this important point. You’re right that, in practice, many firms have embraced spatial modelling—using geomarketing and GIS to optimize site selection, tailor promotions, and sharpen competitive positioning—while academic marketing research has been slower to follow suit. We have updated our manuscript in Section 2.2. with this paragraph to better state the gap we identified: “Although geomarketing has generated sophisticated spatial‐analytic methods, these advances seldom translate into sustained visibility within core marketing literature. High implementation costs for software licenses and high-performance hardware, combined with the lack of faculty training, continue to hinder GIS and geomarketing integration into business and marketing educational programs (Bernhäuserová et al., 2022; Miller et al., 2006). Moreover, due to their application context, most geomarketing studies are published in practitioner-oriented or information systems venues rather than in leading marketing periodicals, so marketing scholars rarely see or cite them (Rynes et al., 2001). Furthermore, these studies often operate independently of core marketing theories such as the marketing mix or customer journey frameworks, reducing their resonance with theory-driven outlets (Libório et al., 2020). Unless these practical and epistemological barriers are addressed, the full conceptual integration of geomarketing into mainstream academic marketing may continue to lag behind its applied potential.”

Comment 8. Lines 93-95 and 149-151: Similarly, while the introduction (Lines 38-45) identifies a lack of comprehensive analysis on the integration of GIS into marketing research, these lines suggest that related research is expanding. The authors should reconcile this by clearly distinguishing between gaps in bibliometric coverage and broader thematic exploration in the field.

Response to Comment 8: Thank you for calling attention to this nuance. You’re right that we need to distinguish between (i) the growing body of individual GIS-based and geomarketing in retail and (ii) the lack of systematic, bibliometric evidence that these studies have penetrated the core of mainstream marketing literature. We have clarified this in three places:

Revised Introduction:

“Despite its transformative promise, the degree of integration of Geographic Information Systems into mainstream marketing scholarship remains uncertain, particularly given recent advances in AI, big data, and omnichannel retail that have heightened demand for spatially granular insights (Torrens, 2022). Addressing this uncertainty is essential, as continuing ambiguity regarding GIS's role in marketing research risks impairing strategic agility and competitive effectiveness in an increasingly spatially driven retail landscape. Our study directly tackles this gap through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 4,952 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2025, explicitly testing whether GIS concepts have organically permeated mainstream marketing thought or remain isolated in specialized niches.”

Revised Discussions:

“Both author-generated and system-generated keyword networks show a negligible presence of GIS or spatial-intelligence concepts, which supports our inquiry into the uncertain role of GIS within marketing research. Instead, topics like pricing (Grewal et al., 1998), customer behavior (Sirdeshmukh et al., 2002; Arnold, 2003), and omnichannel re-tailing (Verhoef et al., 2015; Pantano & Vannucci, 2019) dominate the intellectual structure of the field. We deliberately excluded ‘GIS’ from our search to test whether spatial concepts would emerge organically, and for the most part, they did not. This suggests a missed opportunity to integrate spatial perspectives into foundational constructs such as customer satisfaction, loyalty, and market competition. While scholars such as Wandosell, et al., (2019) and Manoharan & Sathesh, (2020) have shown how GIS can improve retail site selection and customer engagement, these contributions remain isolated. Additionally, the potential of spatial intelligence in influencing network planning and competitive strategy was highlighted in seminal geomarketing work by Libório, et al., (2020) and Banwo, et al., (2017); nevertheless, retail marketing theory has not yet made use of these findings. This suggests a methodological lag, in which research designs do not completely include the instruments that are available.”

Revised Conclusions:

“This study arose from the observation that, despite the growing significance of digital tools in retail strategy, the extent to which GIS has been conceptually integrated into mainstream marketing literature remains uncertain and merits systematic investigation.”

Comment 9. Line 114: The current definition of geomarketing does not include any reference to space or location, which is essential to the concept. Please revise accordingly.

Response to Comment 9: Thank you for pointing out the need to foreground the spatial dimension in our description of geomarketing. We have revised Line 114 to make it explicit that geomarketing is fundamentally about the spatial behaviors and locations of consumers, not just their demographics or transactions.

“Geomarketing builds on GIS-driven geospatial analysis to answer not only where customers live, but also how they move through space—mapping shopping routes, purchase locations, and mobility patterns to inform hyper-local targeting and site-selection decisions.”

Comment 10. Lines 130-132: Since this point is already mentioned earlier in the manuscript, consider moving the specific conclusions of the analysis to the discussion section for better logical flow. Lines 130-147: These two paragraphs repeat content from the introduction. Merging these sections would help improve structure and avoid redundancy.

Response to Comment 10: Thank you for this insightful observation. To enhance clarity and maintain methodological rigor, we have removed the redundant paragraphs in Lines 130–147. Instead, we consolidated the essential points into Section 2.2, where we now clearly articulate the research gap and offer a critical discussion of its underlying causes, eliminating overlap with the Introduction and ensuring a smoother, more focused narrative (see response to Comment 7).

Comment 11. Lines 149-161: Subsection 2.2 overlaps with subsection 2.1. Please revise to clearly differentiate between "The Evolution of Retail and Technological Transformations" and "Conceptual Foundations and Methodological Advances."

Response to Comment 11: Thank you for this helpful pointer. We’ve now clearly delineated the two subsections by moving all historical and technological context into 2.1 and concentrating on the literature’s methodological contributions in 2.2 to eliminate overlap and create a sharper, more logical flow.

Section 2.1 “Evolution of Retail and Technological Transformations” is strictly a chronological overview—from Industry 1.0 through Retail 5.0—showing how each phase shaped consumer behavior and introduced new technologies (AI, IoT, Big Data, etc.), with only a brief note on the history of geomarketing and GIS definitions.
Section 2.2 “Conceptual Foundations and Methodological Advances” then dives into the specific geomarketing and GIS methods that have been applied in retail research, illustrated by a new Table 2 summarizing each study’s techniques and domains.

Study	Methods Applied	Application Domain
Teller & Schnedlitz (2012)	Survey of 217 shopping-mall managers; exploratory factor analysis (Principal Component Analysis) to extract underlying agglomeration drivers; computation of weighted impact indices; paired-samples and independent-samples t-tests to compare driver effects and test moderating variables.	Quantifying how location, tenant mix, marketing, and management factors drive agglomeration effects in retail
Roig‐Tierno et al. (2013)	GIS for geodemand & geocompetition layers; Kernel‐density analysis to identify candidate sites; analytical hierarchy process for multi‐criteria ranking of those sites.	Retail site‐location decision (supermarket in Murcia, Spain)
Efentakis et al. (2013)	Live traffic isochrone computation using floating car data and map-matching; dynamic catchment‐area analysis; overlay of time‐varying isochrones with demographic data.	Real‐time reachability and consumer accessibility for retail site‐selection and service planning
Baviera‐Puig et al. (2016)	GIS‐driven Huff (spatial interaction) model; geocompetition index via kernel density; isochrone-based catchment area analysis.	Network planning and site‐selection strategies for supermarkets in Spain
Ramadani et al. (2018)	Cross-sectional survey of 181 small and medium restaurant operators; Pearson correlation analysis; hierarchical regression to test the impact of business choice and location determinants on firm success	Assessing how geomarketing-related location decisions influence SME performance in Uganda
Tsakiridi, A. (2021)	Systematic literature review following PRISMA; categorization of 120 SCM articles by GIS capability (facility location, network optimization, inventory visualization)	Mapping GIS contributions to supply-chain decision making, including cost minimization, facility siting, network configuration, and inventory control
Skoutas et al. (2021)	Problem formulation for mixture‐based region search with cohesion/completeness constraints; anytime heuristic search using R‐tree–backed spatial pruning	Discovering arbitrarily shaped high‐mixture regions in geospatial point data (hotspot/coldspot analysis)
McGuirt et al. (2022)	GIS‐based assessment of store accessibility (network‐distance measures); customer surveys on shopping patterns and dietary behaviors; multivariate regression analysis to test associations between accessibility and behaviors.	Linking small food store accessibility to customer shopping frequency and dietary intake

Comment 12. Lines 173-174: This statement is repeated multiple times throughout the manuscript. Consider removing or consolidating to avoid redundancy.

Response to Comment 12: Thank you for calling attention to this nuance. We have revised the statement and presented it in a more structured, methodological format that we believe adds clarity and value to our manuscript: “A region-search algorithm developed by Skoutas et al. (2021) shows how GIS techniques can identify irregularly shaped areas on a map where different types of customer behavior overlap, meaning that many customers with certain traits or buying habits converge. With this information, retailers can strengthen their ability to stock the right products in stores, deploy staff and resources effectively, and adjust product assortments accordingly.”

Comment 13. Lines 173-182: The discussion of geomarketing advantages appears again here. It would be more appropriate to present these arguments in the introduction (see general comment

above).

Response to Comment 13: Thank you for your helpful recommendation. We have removed the general discussion of geomarketing advantages from Section 2.2, as it has already been presented in the Introduction. Instead, we now use this space to delve into the specific methods behind those benefits, highlighting how Skoutas et al.’s region-search algorithm and Efentakis et al.’s live-traffic isochrones work in practice. In other words, the broader value proposition of geomarketing (adjusting operations, optimizing resources, and enhancing assortments for products) has been consolidated in the Introduction, while here we focus squarely on the methodological innovations that deliver those advantages.

“The evolution of geomarketing, through the integration of traditional marketing principles and spatial analysis, presents unique opportunities in the retail sector. A region-search algorithm developed by Skoutas et al. (2021) shows how GIS techniques can identify irregularly shaped areas on a map where different types of customer behavior overlap, meaning that many customers with certain traits or buying habits converge. With this information, retailers can strengthen their ability to stock the right products in stores, deploy staff and resources effectively, and adjust product assortments accordingly. Thus, enterprises that effectively employ geomarketing may attain a considerable advantage over competitors adhering to traditional marketing methods.

Beyond location research, geomarketing embodies a comprehensive understanding of the interaction among consumers, retail environments, and competitive structures. Efentakis et al. (2013) built a live‐traffic geomarketing service by first mapping-matching large fleets’ GPS onto OpenStreetMap road graphs and then generating both historic and real-time speed profiles. Every five minutes, they compute time-dependent shortest-path searches to produce dynamic isochrones that are represented by polygons showing all areas reachable within set travel times under current traffic. These isochrones are merged with demographic overlays, letting retailers instantly visualize how traffic shifts affect catchment areas, optimize site selection, target marketing campaigns, and allocate resources with up-to-the-minute spatial precision. As urbanization accelerates and consumer preferences evolve, retailers will increasingly need to refine their strategies through geomarket-driven insights.”

Comment 14. Lines 190-200: While the study's objectives are clearly presented at the end of the introduction, a different, more general aim is restated at the end of Section 2. For clarity, the manuscript should contain one unified and concise paragraph stating the main goal and objectives.

Response to Comment 14: Thank you for highlighting the need for a single, unified statement of our study’s aim. To address this, we have:

Consolidated our objectives into one clear paragraph in the Introduction, where we now state:

“Despite its transformative promise, the degree of integration of GIS into mainstream marketing scholarship remains uncertain, particularly given recent advances in AI, big data, and omnichannel retail that have heightened demand for spatially granular insights (Torrens, 2022). Addressing this uncertainty is essential, as continuing ambiguity regarding GIS's role in marketing research risks impairing strategic agility and competitive effectiveness in an increasingly spatially driven retail landscape. Our study directly tackles this gap through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 4,952 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2025, explicitly testing whether GIS concepts have organically permeated mainstream marketing thought or remain isolated in specialized niches.”

Streamlined Section 2.2 by removing any restatement of this general aim. Instead, we close Section 2.2 with a brief, focused reflection on the methodological paradox, deferring the full theoretical and institutional analysis to Section 5. The new concluding paragraph reads:

Comment 15. Line 209: The expression "version 4.3.3 in R software, version 4.4.1 ... " is unclear. Please clarify what each version number refers to.

Response to Comment 15: Thank you for highlighting this. We have rephrased to be clearer, by adding “within”: “The method integrates both conceptual and exploratory analysis using the Bibliometrix package (version 4.3.3) within R software (version 4.4.1) developed by Aria & Cuccurullo (2017) and is illustrated in Figure 2, which is adapted from Gutiérrez-Salcedo et al. (2018); Moral-Muñoz et al. (2019); Oliveira et al. (2022); Van Raan (2019). “

Comment 16. Lines 212-224: The section describing the advantages of Web of Science over other databases is overly detailed. A more concise summary would be sufficient.

Response to Comment 16: Thank you for this observation. We reformulated in a more concise form, while also keeping the main important aspects of WoS database: “The WoS is known for its clean, standardized data that are an essential foundation for tracking citations, analyzing author networks, and exploring the evolution of research over time (Palácios, et al., 2021; Sarkar, et al., 2022). Compared to databases like Scopus, WoS offers better consistency in cited references and is especially strong in the sciences and social sciences (Pranckutė, 2021).”

Comment 17. Line 227: If the figure was created by the authors, stating "Source: authors" in the caption is unnecessary.

Response to Comment 17: Thank you for this observation. We deleted the “Source: Visualization created by the authors.”.

Comment 18. Line 229: The abbreviation "TS" appears here but is only defined later (Line 232). Please define it at first use.

Response to Comment 18: Thank you for pointing this out. We changed the place. The abbreviation TS is explained before using it: “The Topic Search (TS) targeted titles, abstracts, author keywords, and Keywords Plus”.

Comment 19. Line 242: Since "Geographic Information Systems" was already abbreviated earlier, you can use "GIS" here directly.

Response to Comment 19: Thank you for catching this inconsistency. We have updated Line 242 (and all subsequent occurrences) to use the abbreviation “GIS” in place of the full term “Geographic Information Systems,” ensuring consistent and concise usage throughout the manuscript.

Comment 20. Lines 242-245: The keyword search strategy may introduce bias, particularly by including "geography" and "information systems" as keywords. Please justify or revise the search approach to ensure neutrality.

Response to Comment 20: Thank you for raising this point about potential bias in our search strategy. To clarify and reassure readers, our TS query: TS = ("geomarketing" OR "geographic marketing" OR "location-based marketing" OR "spatial marketing") AND TS = ("retail*" OR "consumer behavior" OR "shopping behavior" OR "store lo-cation" OR "customer segmentation") - contains no standalone “geography” or “information systems” terms. Those broad labels only appear as WoS subject-category filters (to focus on Business, Management, Economics, Geography, Regional & Urban Planning, and Information Systems) rather than in the titles, abstracts, or keywords of retrieved articles.

Comment 21. Lines 271-274: It's possible that GIS is underrepresented due to the prevalence of related terms in Al and machine learning. Have the authors investigated this as a potential reason?

Response to Comment 21: Thank you for pointing this out. AI and machine learning are separate from GIS, so we didn’t treat AI buzzwords as proxies for spatial methods. To be certain that GIS concepts weren’t hiding under different labels, we explicitly looked for a predefined list of GIS and spatial-analysis terms in our keyword data and included this paragraph in the Materials and Methods section: “Although GIS was not explicitly included as a search term, we intended to examine whether geospatial concepts naturally surface in geomarketing research literature. To do this, we specifically tracked the presence and prominence of the following terms in our keyword co-occurrence and thematic analyses: GIS, Geographic Information Systems, spatial analysis, spatial analytics, location intelligence, geospatial, isochrone, catchment area, kernel-density, Huff model, map matching, spatial clustering, spatial interaction, spatial decision support systems, geocoding, and spatial econometrics. This targeted list allowed us to conduct an unbiased assessment of the true extent to which GIS and related methods are integrated into mainstream marketing scholarship.” By doing this, we could objectively check whether those GIS terms appeared at all, and they did not, so we can confidently conclude that spatial methods really are under-represented in the mainstream geomarketing literature.

Comment 22. Lines 285-286: Consider briefly explaining the distinction between "author keywords" and "keywords plus" for clarity.

Response to Comment 22: Thank you for this suggestion. We have added a concise explanation of the two keyword types to improve clarity. The revised paragraph now reads:

“Author Keywords are manually chosen by the paper’s authors and thus reflect the specific focus of each study, whereas Keywords-Plus are algorithmically generated by Web of Science from cited references, capturing broader, foundational concepts across the literature.”

Comment 23. Lines 289-291: This paragraph should describe what was actually done rather than what may or should be done. Please rephrase accordingly.

Response to Comment 23: Thank you for this helpful observation. We have removed the referenced paragraph entirely, as it was a remnant from an earlier draft and did not reflect any actual analysis steps.

Comment 24. Lines 294-295: If the authors observe publication fluctuations, they should provide a brief explanation or hypothesis as to why this occurs.

Response to Comment 24: Thank you for highlighting the need to explain the 2007–2009 fluctuation. We have added the following sentence to Section 4.1:

“The global financial crisis of 2007–2008 led to widespread budget cuts in retail and academic research, delaying or scaling back new studies (Breznitz & Clayton, 2017; Hsu & Chiang, 2024).”

Comment 25. Lines 302-304: If the 2025 data point is based on incomplete records and may mislead readers, consider omitting it from the analysis.

Response to Comment 25: Thank you for your suggestion. We have elected to retain the 2025 data point for two key reasons. First, including the most recent year, even though still being indexed, provides readers with a transparent view of ongoing publication momentum and prevents artificial truncation of the time series. Second, it is common practice in bibliometric studies to present partial‐year data with appropriate caveats, as this allows for real‐time trend monitoring (Hook, et al., 2021[1]). Accordingly, we have added the following note to Section 4.1: “We emphasize that the sharp decline observed in 2025 is merely an artifact of incomplete data, as ongoing research for the year is still being indexed.“

Comment 26. Lines 305-306: The phrase "differences between Author Keywords and Keywords-Plus" in the subsection title is unnecessary, as the text already discusses these differences in detail.

Response to Comment 26: Thank you for this helpful observation. We have removed it from the subtitle. Now it reads: “4.2. Knowledge Structure & Thematic Evolution“

Comment 27. Line 340: Please confirm whether this reference is to Figure 3, and revise accordingly for clarity.

Response to Comment 27: Thank you for catching this. We have corrected the in‐text citation to refer to Figure 3 instead of Figure 4.

Comment 28. Line 350: A space is missing between the words "(ID)Source"; please correct this formatting issue.

Response to Comment 28: Thank you for pointing this out. We have corrected it.

Comment 29. Lines 356-357: Rather than saying GIS presence is "limited" in this cluster, it appears to be absent altogether. Please clarify and elaborate.

Response to Comment 29: Thank you for this observation. We agree that “limited” understates the situation here. We have updated the text to read: “Although AI and geospatial analytics are increasingly used in business intelligence, this cluster shows no evidence of GIS-based methods being applied to support strategic decisions.”

Comment 30. Line 405: This sentence would be better placed before Figure 6 for improved flow.

Response to Comment 30: Thank you for the recommendation. We have now moved the sentence just before Figure 6.

We greatly appreciate your thorough and thoughtful feedback, which has helped us sharpen both the structure and substance of our manuscript. In response, we have eliminated redundant content, clarified our unified research objectives, strengthened the Introduction with concrete geomarketing advantages, and delineated methodological steps, especially around our unbiased search for GIS and spatial‐analysis terms. We’ve refined our theoretical framing in Section 2, tightened the flow between figures and text, and added contextual explanations for publication fluctuations and provisional 2025 data. All in‐text citations, subtitles, and keyword definitions have been standardized for precision and clarity. We believe these revisions address each of your comments and significantly enhance the coherence, rigor, and readability of our study. Thank you again for your invaluable guidance.

[1] Hook, D. W., Porter, S. J., Draux, H., & Herzog, C. T. (2021). Real-time bibliometrics: dimensions as a resource for analyzing aspects of COVID-19. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 5, 595299.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic covered by this review is relevant and needed. However, the article presents a very big contradiction. It searches for thousands of articles with topics related to spatial concepts, but results in terms of keywords (both De and ID) don't show any of these concepts at all. I would accept these results if the search was performed over all marketing articles. But this is not the case. As is, the review is irrelevant as it fails to capture the spatial component in the literature.

Please finds below a few detailed comments:

- Very big parts of the text without references: for example ln 130 to 147 or 112 to 121 but many other. All assertions need to be justified with references.

- Why did you use a single database? It is common practice now a days to use at least three scientific databases.

- Please explain why you restrained your search to 2000, when basic seminal geomarketing literature occurs in the 90's

- in Line 236 you mention additional filtering. The explanation provided does not allow for the method to be reproducible. Please improve.

- Please clarify what types of documents you looked for: journals, proceedings, book chapters, all?

- Please be clear on how you dealt with GIS concepts.

- Please provide all the steps for key word standardisation.

- You mention inclusion criteria in line 251. Please specify those criteria.

- In figure 2 maybe you could forecast the data for 2025 based on the trend of the past 5 years.

- For 4.2.1 can you show a table/figure showing the most common author keywords and keywords-plus?

- Line 340- You mean Figure 3?

- Not finding any keyword co-ocuurence in your results is odd since all of your articles should include GIS and related concepts. This was part of your search query. I believe that there must be some problem with the analysis. Probably already within the original dataset of 4952 articles. Please revise your procedure.

- There is no figure 8

- In 4.3.1, 4.3.2 etc did you check whether of the articles actually mention geomarketing?

- Are any of the top 10 papers about geomarketing?

- Some of your conclusions such as "There is increasing acknowledgment that GIS, previously utilized mostly for mapping static retail settings, now possesses the capability to enhance dynamic, real-time retail strategies" are not based on your results.

Author Response

Reviewer 4 Comment and Answers

We are sincerely grateful for your thoughtful and rigorous critique, which directly engages with the central assumptions of our work. Your comments helped us identify areas where our methodological rationale needed to be more transparent and where key decisions, such as the deliberate omission of GIS-related terms, required clearer justification. We have taken your observations seriously and have substantially revised the manuscript to ensure that our hypothesis, analytical strategy, and interpretation of results are presented with stronger argumentative clarity and coherence. Please find below our detailed responses, which aim not only to address your concerns but also to highlight how your feedback has meaningfully strengthened the scholarly rigor and relevance of the revised version.

General comment: The topic covered by this review is relevant and needed. However, the article presents a very big contradiction. It searches for thousands of articles with topics related to spatial concepts, but results in terms of keywords (both De and ID) don't show any of these concepts at all. I would accept these results if the search was performed over all marketing articles. But this is not the case. As is, the review is irrelevant as it fails to capture the spatial component in the literature.

Response: We appreciate the careful reading and direct articulation of a central concern, namely, the apparent contradiction between the scope of our dataset and the absence of spatial concepts in the results. Your observation prompted us to re-express more clearly the guiding logic of our study, which ultimately strengthens the coherence and purpose of the manuscript.

The concern you raise, i.e., “the article searches for thousands of articles with topics related to spatial concepts, but the results do not show any of these concepts at all,” appears contradictory only if the corpus is assumed to be pre-filtered for spatial content. However, this was precisely not the case, and we are thankful for the opportunity to clarify.

Our objective was not to map the literature that explicitly uses GIS, but to assess whether concepts related to spatial intelligence, such as GIS, location analytics, or geospatial decision support, have organically permeated the intellectual structure of geomarketing as it appears in mainstream marketing research. To this end, we deliberately excluded “GIS” and related spatial terms from our search string. Instead, we focused on retrieving articles that use the terms “geomarketing” or “geo-marketing” in titles, abstracts, or keywords, trusting the database to reflect how scholars themselves frame and label their contributions. This approach allowed us to test whether spatial concepts emerge as core elements of the field’s internal discourse, rather than presupposing their presence.

This strategy is now clearly stated in the revised Section 3 – Materials and Methods, where we explain:

“This study investigates the extent to which GIS and spatial concepts have been intellectually integrated into mainstream marketing literature. Our guiding research question is: To what extent do GIS and geomarketing-related concepts emerge as central or peripheral within the knowledge structure of retail marketing scholarship? This question motivated a bibliometric approach designed not to assume GIS’s presence, but to assess whether it surfaces organically in conceptual clusters, author networks, and thematic keyword co-occurrences. To ensure this, we deliberately excluded “GIS” from our initial search string, allowing for an unbiased analysis of conceptual emergence. The methodology that follows details how we assembled, processed, and analyzed a large-scale bibliographic dataset to evaluate both thematic trends and structural visibility within geomarketing research.”

What may appear as a contradiction is, in fact, a core empirical result: the absence of spatial-intelligence concepts in the bibliometric structure confirms our hypothesis. It reveals that, despite GIS’s practical relevance in retail site selection, logistics, and location-based marketing, the marketing literature itself has not integrated these tools conceptually. In Section 5.1, we now state this more clearly:

We hope this clarification resolves the concern and illustrates that the seeming contradiction is, in fact, the diagnostic mechanism through which the paper confirms its central hypothesis: that the role of GIS in marketing remains uncertain, peripheral, and under-theorized, despite its proven practical utility.

We thank the reviewer once again for prompting us to clarify this fundamental point, which now anchors the paper more clearly and convincingly.

Having addressed this overarching concern, which we agree was central to ensuring the internal coherence and relevance of our analysis, we now turn to your specific, detailed comments. Below, we provide point-by-point responses and clarifications to each of the issues you thoughtfully raised.

Comment 1. Very big parts of the text without references: for example ln 130 to 147 or 112 to 121 but many other. All assertions need to be justified with references.

Response to Comment 1: Thank you for this important observation. We have carefully reviewed the manuscript and systematically inserted appropriate citations throughout the indicated sections (and elsewhere) to support every factual statement and claim. At the same time, we have preserved our own interpretive narrative because, while grounding our work in the existing literature is essential, the purpose of this review is also to offer an original synthesis and critical perspective on how spatial methods are (or are not) reflected in marketing research. We trust that the added references now fully substantiate all assertions and that our commentary still highlights the novel insights we bring by interpreting those findings.

Comment 2. Why did you use a single database? It is common practice now a days to use at least three scientific databases.

Response to Comment 2: We thank the reviewer for this thoughtful observation. The use of a single database is indeed a valid methodological concern in bibliometric studies. However, our decision to rely exclusively on the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collectionwas both deliberate and methodologically grounded. We selected WoS for three compelling reasons:

Superior data quality and consistency:

WoS is widely regarded as the most curated and standardized citation database, particularly in terms of its cited-reference indexing, which is essential for robust bibliometric analyses. Its rigorous quality controls ensure a high degree of metadata accuracy, minimize record duplication, and preserve consistent author and source identifiers, all of which are critical when generating reliable co-citation networks, keyword co-occurrence maps, and conceptual structures (Palácios et al., 2021; Sarkar et al., 2022). As Pranckutė (2021) notes, when analytical precision and replicability are paramount, WoS often outperforms broader but noisier alternatives such as Google Scholar or even Scopus.

Disciplinary relevance and focus:

Our study spans two interlinked but distinct domains: mainstream marketing literature and the spatial sciences (including GIS and geomarketing). The WoS Core Collection, particularly through its inclusion of SSCI and SCIE indices, offers comprehensive coverage of high-impact journals across both fields, including Journal of Marketing, Environment and Planning B, Geographical Analysis, and others that are highly relevant to our research scope. Expanding to other databases risked introducing grey literature, conference proceedings, and lower-quality sources that could dilute the specificity and rigor required by our guiding hypothesis.

Methodological precedent in top-tier bibliometric research:

Many recent, high‐quality bibliometric studies in marketing and related fields have successfully relied on WoS alone (Saleem, et al., 2021[1]; Wang, et al., 2023[2]; Kar & Wasnik, 2024[3]), due to its balance of disciplinary breadth and metadata integrity. While multi‐database searches can increase recall, they also introduce heterogeneity in record formats, duplicate management challenges, and uneven coverage across disciplines. Given our goal of conducting a precise, reproducible analysis of peer‐reviewed marketing and spatial‐science literature, WoS alone provided the optimal balance of data quality, disciplinary breadth, and methodological rigor.

For these reasons, we respectfully contend that our use of WoS is not a limitation but a deliberate and methodologically sound decision, carefully aligned with the study’s objective to deliver a clean, focused, and reproducible mapping of how spatial concepts (or their absence) manifest within peer-reviewed marketing scholarship. We have clarified this rationale in Section 3 of the revised manuscript to ensure full transparency and to reflect established practices in bibliometric research.

Comment 3. Please explain why you restrained your search to 2000, when basic seminal geomarketing literature occurs in the 90's

Response to Comment 3: We appreciate the reviewer’s observation regarding the presence of foundational geomarketing literature in the 1990s. Indeed, early contributions during that period helped shape the field’s conceptual underpinnings. However, we intentionally limited our bibliometric analysis to the 2000–2025 period in order to ensure methodological consistency and data reliability.

While Web of Science does contain some records from the 1990s, its comprehensive and standardized indexing, especially for SSCI and SCIE journals, only stabilizes after 2000. Prior to this threshold, metadata such as author affiliations, abstracts, and especially keyword fields (both ID and DE) are often incomplete or inconsistently formatted, which would compromise the integrity of longitudinal trend analysis, co-word networks, and conceptual mapping. As (Birkle et al., 2020[4]) emphasize, WoS indexing practices became notably more robust from 2000 onward, which makes this cut-off a common and accepted practice in contemporary bibliometric research.

Comment 4. in Line 236 you mention additional filtering. The explanation provided does not allow for the method to be reproducible. Please improve.

Response to Comment 4: Thank you for this important observation. In the revised manuscript, we have clarified and expanded the Materials and Methods section to include a detailed, step-by-step account of our subject-category filtering, export, and data curation procedures. Below is a summary of the process we followed to ensure both transparency and reproducibility:

After conducting the initial Boolean query in the Web of Science Core Collection, we applied a subject-category filter to retain only documents classified under relevant WoS categories:
WC = (“Business” OR “Management” OR “Economics” OR “Geography” OR “Regional & Urban Planning” OR “Computer Science – Information Systems”).
This filter, combined with our base query using the AND operator, yielded 5,159 records.

Because the WoS web interface allows a maximum export of 500 records per batch, we exported the results in five batches (1–500, 501–1000, etc.) using the “Full Record + Cited References” option and saved each batch in plaintext format. These were then merged into a single file using the following terminal command:

cat wos_1_500.txt wos_501_1000.txt wos_1001_1500.txt wos_1501_2000.txt wos_2001_2159.txt > merged_wos.txt

Once merged, we imported the dataset into R using the bibliometrix package, with the following code:

file <- "merged_wos.txt"

M <- convert2df(file, dbsource = "wos", format = "plaintext")

At this stage, we conducted manual curation to remove duplicates, incomplete records, and out-of-scope entries, such as articles dealing exclusively with transport logistics, spatial epidemiology, or environmental modeling, which, although spatial in nature, were not relevant to our focus on retail marketing and business-oriented spatial intelligence.

This refinement resulted in a final dataset of 4,952 documents, which formed the empirical base for all subsequent analyses (e.g., keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, conceptual structure). These clarifications have been added to Section 3 of the manuscript to ensure the process is fully transparent and reproducible.

Comment 5. Please clarify what types of documents you looked for: journals, proceedings, book chapters, all?

Response to Comment 5: Thank you very much for this thoughtful question. We realize that the original text did not specify the document types with sufficient clarity. In response, we have now explicitly stated in the revised manuscript that our search was limited to peer-reviewed journal publications, specifically, articles and reviews written in English. Our intention was to focus on contributions that reflect established scholarly dialogue within the academic marketing and spatial analysis communities, while avoiding the variability often found in conference proceedings, book chapters, or other non-journal sources.

To reflect this clearly, we have revised the Methods section to read:

“The search was conducted on March 15, 2025, in the Web of Science Core Collection and was restricted to English-language journal publications (Document Types: Article OR Review) published between 2000 and 2025.”

We hope this clarification addresses your concern and aligns with the standards expected for rigorous and replicable bibliometric analyses.

Comment 6. Please be clear on how you dealt with GIS concepts.

Response to Comment 6: Thank you for encouraging greater transparency on this point. Our intention was to investigate the extent to which GIS and related spatial concepts emerge organically within mainstream marketing literature, rather than pre-structuring the dataset by including such terms in the initial Boolean query. To that end, we did not include “GIS” or similar keywords in the search string, so as to avoid artificially inflating their presence in the results.

However, to systematically assess whether and how spatial-intelligence terminology appears in the dataset, we conducted a targeted keyword-tracking procedure during the co-occurrence and thematic mapping stages. Specifically, we searched for the presence of sixteen GIS-related terms across both Author Keywords (DE) and Keywords Plus (ID).

These included: GIS, Geographic Information Systems, spatial analysis, spatial analytics, location intelligence, geospatial, isochrone, catchment area, kernel-density, Huff model, map matching, spatial clustering, spatial interaction, spatial decision support systems, geocoding, and spatial econometrics.

The results revealed a striking pattern: while the term GIS itself appears with some frequency (277 occurrences), the broader family of spatial-analytical terms is barely represented. For instance, spatial analysis appears only 8 times, Geographic Information Systems just 5 times, and 9 of the 16 tracked terms occur zero times in the entire dataset. This finding reinforces our central argument, that despite the real-world prevalence of spatial methods in retail and site selection, such methods are marginal in the marketing research discourse. We now report these results in a new annex table (Table 6) and briefly highlight them in Section 5.2 of the revised manuscript.

We appreciate your suggestion, which helped us deepen the empirical grounding of this key point. This is the supplementary subsection introduced within the discussion for this purpose:

“5.2.1. Supplementary Analysis: Targeted Keyword Occurrence of Spatial Concepts

To further substantiate this observed gap, we conducted a targeted keyword tracking analysis during the bibliometric mapping process. This supplementary procedure systematically identified the occurrence of sixteen core GIS-related terms (e.g., spatial analysis, geocoding, location intelligence, etc.) across both author-generated and indexer-assigned keywords.

The results were striking: while the term GIS appeared 277 times, nearly all other terms, including catchment area, spatial clustering, and isochrone, occurred fewer than five times, or not at all. These findings, summarized in Table 5.1, confirm that geospatial concepts, although widely used in practice, remain peripheral in mainstream marketing research. Rather than contradicting our hypothesis, this sharp absence of spatial keywords reinforces it, underscoring the conceptual isolation of spatial thinking in the marketing knowledge structure.

Table 6. Occurrence of Spatial Concepts in Author and Index Keywords

*Keyword*	*Total Occurrences*
*GIS*	277
*spatial analysis*	8
*Geographic Information Systems*	5
*spatial interaction*	5
*Huff model*	1
*geospatial*	1
*spatial econometrics*	1
*catchment area*	0
*geocoding*	0
*isochrone*	0
*kernel-density*	0
*location intelligence*	0
*map matching*	0
*spatial analytics*	0
*spatial clustering*	0
*spatial decision support systems*	0

This supplementary analysis reinforces our central argument: spatial analytics have not yet achieved intellectual integration within the marketing research ecosystem, even as their practical relevance increases.”

Comment 7. Please provide all the steps for key word standardisation.

Response to Comment 7: We appreciate your request for clarification. As noted in the revised Method section, we retained keywords exactly as indexed in the Web of Science and as provided by authors. This decision was intentional and methodologically aligned with our research objective: to assess the natural conceptual prominence—or absence—of GIS-related terminology in the retail marketing literature. Rather than performing keyword harmonization or semantic grouping, we relied on the original vocabulary to preserve the authentic structure of the discourse as it has evolved over time.

By not standardizing keywords, we avoided introducing subjective biases or artificial thematic convergence, which could have obscured the very patterns we aimed to uncover. This approach ensures that any absence of spatial terms in the co-occurrence and thematic analyses is not the result of pre-processing assumptions, but a genuine reflection of how the field currently integrates (or overlooks) geospatial thinking. We have clarified this rationale in Section 3 of the revised manuscript to make our methodological choices transparent and reproducible.

Comment 8. You mention inclusion criteria in line 251. Please specify those criteria.

Response to Comment 8: We apologize for the confusion. No further inclusion or exclusion criteria were applied beyond the initial Web of Science filters (publication years 2000–2025; English-language; Articles and Reviews; specified subject categories). The text at line 251 was intended to introduce our analytical procedures. Specifically, the use of the Bibliometrix framework for co-occurrence analysis, including the identification of high-frequency terms, construction of keyword networks, and thematic clustering, rather than defining additional record-selection rules.

To eliminate any ambiguity, we have replaced the term “inclusion” at line 251 with “analytical procedures.” “Going further, the third step implied the use of the Bibliometrix framework to conduct a co-occurrence analysis of keywords that map the intellectual structure of geomarketing research. These analytical procedures were used to identify high-frequency terms, keyword networks, and thematic clusters.“

We hope this resolves the misunderstanding and confirms the transparency of our methodological flow.

Comment 9. In figure 2 maybe you could forecast the data for 2025 based on the trend of the past 5 years.

Response to Comment 9: Thank you for this valuable suggestion. We have updated Figure 2 to include a forecasted value for 2025 based on a linear model fitted to the previous five complete years (2020–2024). The model projects approximately 442 publications for 2025, significantly higher than the current partial count of 127, which reflects incomplete indexing as of March 2025. This revised figure clarifies that the observed drop is not indicative of a reversal in the trend but an artifact of the data extraction point. We appreciate your recommendation, which helped us present this information more accurately and effectively.

This is the updated paragraph and figure in the 4.1 subsection:

“Although the raw count of articles for 2025 appears to decline, this is due to incomplete indexing at the time of data extraction (March 2025). To account for this and avoid misinterpretation, we applied a linear forecast model using the publication data from the most recent five complete years (2020–2024). The model predicts a full-year output of approximately 442 articles in 2025. This forecasted value, shown in green in Figure 2, supports the conclusion that the research trend in geomarketing remains on a clear upward trajectory.

Figure 2. Evolution of Geomarketing Research in Retail (2000–2025) Source: Authors’ representation using the Bibliometrix package in R software.

Note: The green marker represents the forecasted number of articles for 2025 (n = 442), while the red marker shows the incomplete count available at the time of extraction (n = 127).”

Comment 10. For 4.2.1 can you show a table/figure showing the most common author keywords and keywords-plus?

Response to Comment 10: Thank you for this excellent suggestion. To address it, we have added two new figures in Section 4.2.1:

Figure 3: Top 20 most frequent Keywords-Plus terms, along with their occurrence counts.
Figure 4: Top 20 most frequent Author Keywords, along with their occurrence counts.

These figures are now fully integrated into the narrative and discussed in relation to their theoretical and practical implications. Together, they help illuminate the key domains that define the field's intellectual boundaries and underscore the relative absence of spatial concepts, thus supporting our hypothesis. We believe these additions significantly enhance the transparency and interpretability of the bibliometric landscape.

Comment 11. Line 340- You mean Figure 3?

Response to Comment 11: Thank you for catching this. We have corrected the in‐text citation to refer to Figure 3 instead of Figure 4.

Comment 12. Not finding any keyword co-ocuurence in your results is odd since all of your articles should include GIS and related concepts. This was part of your search query. I believe that there must be some problem with the analysis. Probably already within the original dataset of 4952 articles. Please revise your procedure.

Response to Comment 12: Thank you for this critical observation. We fully understand the concern and are grateful for the opportunity to clarify our methodological intent. Contrary to the assumption that our dataset was built from articles explicitly focused on GIS, we intentionally excluded "GIS" and other spatial-method terms from our Boolean search string. This design choice was central to our hypothesis: we sought to test whether geospatial concepts, particularly GIS, have organically permeated mainstream marketing literature, without being artificially introduced through query construction.

In other words, our goal was not to preselect GIS-focused articles, but rather to evaluate whether spatial thinking emerges naturally in the intellectual and conceptual structure of geomarketing research as it appears in peer-reviewed marketing and business journals. The absence of GIS in the co-occurrence networks is not a flaw, but a significant empirical result: it indicates a genuine lack of integration of spatial intelligence into the dominant research themes of the field.

To ensure the robustness of this finding, we also conducted a targeted supplementary analysis in which we systematically searched for 16 key GIS-related terms, including "GIS," "spatial analysis," "geospatial," "location intelligence," "Huff model," and "isochrone", within the author and Keywords-Plus fields across all 4,952 records. The results confirmed our hypothesis: aside from "GIS" itself (n = 277), virtually none of the spatial concepts appeared with any meaningful frequency. Many received fewer than 5 mentions; several registered zero occurrences. This further strengthens our conclusion that GIS remains conceptually peripheral in the marketing literature, despite its widespread application in industry.

We have now clearly explained this rationale and included references to the supplementary keyword analysis in the Discussion sections. Your comment has helped us make the logic and structure of our investigation even more transparent.

Comment 13. There is no figure 8

Response to Comment 13: Thank you for catching this numbering error. We have carefully reviewed all tables and figures, corrected the sequencing, and updated every in-text reference so that the figures now run sequentially and every referenced figure (including what was previously missing ‘Figure 8’) is present and correctly numbered.

Comment 14. In 4.3.1, 4.3.2 etc did you check whether of the articles actually mention geomarketing?

Thank you for this valuable observation. To address it, we conducted a systematic post hoc search within our curated dataset (n = 4,952) to identify the explicit presence of the term geomarketing in each record’s metadata fields. This was implemented in R using the dplyr and stringr packages to scan the Title, Abstract, Author Keywords, and Keywords-Plus fields for both lowercase and capitalized instances of the string “geomarketing”. The search was not limited to exact matches but also captured compound or hyphenated variants (e.g., “geo-marketing”) using regex syntax.

The resulting filter revealed only 22 documents explicitly containing the term geomarketing, underscoring its relatively marginal status in the published marketing literature, even within a dataset specifically designed to capture spatially relevant content. This confirms that, although spatial themes are implicitly present across many contributions, the term geomarketing has not achieved conceptual or terminological consolidation in the academic discourse.

This systematic keyword tracking complements our broader findings, including the co-occurrence and thematic analyses, and further substantiates our core argument: that spatial and geoinformation-based approaches, while increasingly relevant in practice, remain under-articulated within mainstream marketing research. We have now added this clarification to Section 5.1 of the revised manuscript to ensure transparency and conceptual alignment.

Comment 15. Are any of the top 10 papers about geomarketing?

Response to Comment 15: We appreciate the reviewer’s critical observation regarding the thematic alignment between our search focus and the top-cited articles. It is indeed accurate that some of the most highly cited papers retrieved in our bibliometric dataset do not explicitly reference the term "geomarketing." However, this pattern is not uncommon and aligns with known behaviors in bibliometric science.

Bibliometric analyses based on performance indicators such as global citations and local citations often capture works that have methodologically or conceptually shaped the field, even when they do not contain the exact keywords in the title or abstract. As explained by Zupic and Čater (2015)[5], influential articles in a research domain may exert their impact through "foundational constructs, methodological frameworks, or widely adopted models" which become integral to downstream research—even if the original article does not mention the precise keyword being queried. This phenomenon is also observed in co-citation networks, where articles are linked based on shared intellectual influence rather than strict lexical overlap. As Donthu et al. (2021)[6] outline in their framework for bibliometric analysis, bibliometric indicators such as total citations often reflect broader thematic relevance or methodological significance within the citing corpus, not merely keyword frequency. Furthermore, Ellegaard and Wallin (2015)[7] emphasized that semantic matching between keywords and bibliographic records is not always direct, especially in interdisciplinary fields such as geomarketing, where the foundational studies may originate from related but adjacent domains like retail analytics, spatial decision support, or consumer behavior modeling.

Thus, rather than indicating a flaw in our dataset or method, the absence of geomarketing in the top 10 article titles underscores the diffuse and interdisciplinary nature of the field. It reinforces our broader argument that while spatial ideas permeate marketing literature, they are often embedded without being formally labeled as geomarketing, highlighting a key gap in conceptual articulation.

Comment 16. Some of your conclusions such as "There is increasing acknowledgment that GIS, previously utilized mostly for mapping static retail settings, now possesses the capability to enhance dynamic, real-time retail strategies" are not based on your results.

Response to Comment 16: Thank you for this valuable observation. We acknowledge that the sentence in question, referring to GIS as enabling “dynamic, real-time retail strategies”, was not directly supported by the results of our bibliometric analysis. While such applications may exist in practice, they were not substantively reflected in the academic literature captured in our dataset. To ensure precision and avoid overstating our findings, we have removed the sentence and revised the conclusions section accordingly. The updated version now focuses exclusively on empirically grounded insights, highlighting the continued marginality of GIS-related concepts in marketing scholarship and the potential for future integration.

We sincerely appreciate Reviewer 4’s thoughtful observations and constructive feedback, which have helped us significantly improve the clarity, methodological transparency, and scholarly contribution of this manuscript.

[1] Saleem, F., Khattak, A., Ur Rehman, S., & Ashiq, M. (2021). Bibliometric analysis of green marketing research from 1977 to 2020. Publications, 9(1), 1.

[2] Wang, S., Liu, M. T., & Pérez, A. (2023). A bibliometric analysis of green marketing in marketing and related fields: From 1991 to 2021. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 35(8), 1857-1882.

[3] Kar, R., & Wasnik, A. (2024). Progress and trends in healthcare marketing strategy (2018–2022): A descriptive and bibliometric analysis of the Web of Science (WOS) dataset. International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, 18(2), 325-349.

[4] Birkle, C., Pendlebury, D. A., Schnell, J., & Adams, J. (2020). Web of Science as a data source for research on scientific and scholarly activity. Quantitative science studies, 1(1), 363-376.

[5] Zupic, I., & Čater, T. (2015). Bibliometric methods in management and organization. Organizational Research Methods, 18(3), 429–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428114562629

[6] Donthu, N., Kumar, S., Mukherjee, D., Pandey, N., & Lim, W. M. (2021). How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 133, 285–296.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.04.070

[7] Ellegaard, O., & Wallin, J. A. (2015). The bibliometric analysis of scholarly production: How great is the impact? Scientometrics, 105(3), 1809–1831. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1645-z

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Congratulations on this thorough and comprehensive revision of your manuscript. I have been pleasantly surprised by the remarkable improvements you have made, which significantly strengthen the study’s academic rigor and its contribution to the field of geotechnologies. The manuscript now demonstrates a clear research hypothesis, an enhanced argumentative structure, and well-articulated contributions that bridge GIS integration with marketing scholarship.

As a final suggestion, consider explicitly including the guiding research question in the Introduction section, ideally just after the statement of the central hypothesis (Line 57). This small adjustment would further enhance the logical flow and consistency of the manuscript, ensuring clarity for a broader readership.

Thank you again for your dedicated and thoughtful work on this important study.

Author Response

Thank you again for your dedicated and thoughtful work on this important study.

Thank you once again for your generous feedback. We’re delighted to hear that the manuscript’s academic rigor and contributions now more clearly bridge GIS integration with marketing scholarship. Your earlier recommendations were instrumental in shaping the enhancements you’ve just praised, and each suggestion has helped us refine our argument, strengthen our hypotheses, and sharpen our theoretical contributions.

In line with your final suggestion, we have explicitly inserted the guiding research question immediately after the central hypothesis in the Introduction (Line 57). The new text now reads:.

“Our study directly tackles this gap through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 4,952 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2025. Accordingly, the study is guided by the following research question: To what extent do GIS and geomarketing-related concepts emerge as central or peripheral elements within the knowledge structure of retail marketing scholarship?“

The paper has benefited enormously from your thoughtful critique, and we are very happy with the many improvements it now embodies. Thank you for helping us elevate the clarity and impact of our study. Your insight regarding the placement of the research question has ensured greater transparency and logical flow, which we believe will benefit a broader readership and enhance the manuscript’s accessibility.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have read your answers and the changes you have made.

The article still does not make sense to me, especially for a geoinformaation journal. Your additions to 5.2.1 are ok but they look like a patch.

Author Response

I have read your answers and the changes you have made.

The article still does not make sense to me, especially for a geoinformaation journal. Your additions to 5.2.1 are ok but they look like a patch.

We thank you for taking the time to read through our revised manuscript and for your continued engagement with our work. We’re very grateful for your recommendation to expand Section 5.2.1. In Section 5.2.1, we supplement our broader bibliometric mapping with a targeted keyword occurrence analysis of sixteen core spatial terms. Despite “GIS” appearing 277 times, nearly all other concepts register fewer than five mentions or none at all. This additional final analysis confirms that, while spatial analytics are widely applied in practice, they remain largely peripheral in the theoretical discourse of retail-marketing scholarship.
This is why we believe that our findings are essential for a geoinformation journal. By mapping the intellectual footprint of geomarketing concepts within retail, presenting both their methodological advances and their surprising absence from core discourse, we highlight two disciplines and chart a clear agenda for integrating spatial thinking into future marketing scholarship. We recognize that the disciplinary distance between geoinformation and mainstream marketing research may contribute to this gap, and believe that surfacing these blind spots is precisely what advances interdisciplinary scholarship. Our intention was to offer not only a mapping of the current state but also a clear foundation for more integrative research going forward.

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Where Business Meets Location Intelligence: A Bibliometric Analysis of Geomarketing Research in Retail

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