ABSTRACT
This chapter examines to define, measure, and evaluate the outcomes of geographic and psychic distances for international marketing. It also examines geographic and psychic distances between firms and their markets decrease in a globalizing world. The chapter inquires into the fields of industrial economy. It explains economic geography and the central role of costs. A basic definition of geographic distance between home and target country refers to their degree of physical separation. The chapter focuses such important issues as the puzzling persistence of the distance effect, and the existence of a paradox of both distance and proximity. Proximity and distance differ mainly with respect to the intensity and sharpness which they ascribe to the respective distinction: 'proximity' thereby denotes a smaller, whereas 'distance' means a greater, degree of divergence along the same, gradually increasing, scale.
