Path Data in Marketing: An Integrative Framework and Prospectus for Model Building
回顾了营销领域中路径数据的相关文献，提出了路径的正式定义和统一框架，帮助研究者理解消费者在空间中的移动行为，并指导未来模型构建。
Many data sets, from different and seemingly unrelated marketing domains, all involve paths—records of consumers' movements in a spatial configuration. Path data contain valuable information for marketing researchers because they describe how consumers interact with their environment and make dynamic choices. As data collection technologies improve and researchers continue to ask deeper questions about consumers' motivations and behaviors, path data sets will become more common and will play a more central role in marketing research. To guide future research in this area, we review the previous literature, propose a formal definition of a path (in a marketing context), and derive a unifying framework that allows us to classify different kinds of paths. We identify and discuss two primary dimensions (characteristics of the spatial configuration and the agent) as well as six underlying subdimensions. Based on this framework, we cover a range of important operational issues that should be taken into account as researchers begin to build formal models of path-related phenomena. We close with a brief look into the future of path-based models, and a call for researchers to address some of these emerging issues.