ABSTRACT
There is always a distance between a selling and a buying organisation, both in a geographical and in a mental sense. There are distances in both these dimensions also between actors in the same organisation. These distances will cause difficulties for the different types of flows between buyer and seller: flows like information, products, and money. Psychic distance is particularly important in the interaction approach to the study of marketing exchanges, where the creation and maintenance of longlasting links between buyer and seller are basic assumptions. This chapter discusses some aspects of this distance or closeness between buyers and sellers. The interaction between buyer and seller leads to the development of an "atmosphere", which can be described in terms of closeness/distance, conflict/cooperation, and power/dependence. In order to clarify the various concepts of distance, the chapter focuses on a case description of the relations between a Swedish firm and a large French mining company—"Union des Montagnes Metalliferes" (UMM).
