Where Does It Happen? The Location of the Production and Consumption of Web Information

Abstract

Marketing and urban geography notions, such as “service areas,” “catchment areas,” “influence areas,” “central place hierarchy,” and the like, explaining the relationship of the location of customers to stores and service providers, disappeared with the instantaneous, distance-free access to electronic information from anywhere to anywhere. In principle, the untethering from location should have been true not only for information consumption, but also for information production, which is, indeed, the case with e-mail, the production of information on a personal level. However, it is questionable whether global electronic information in the form of Web sites of various kinds, notably commercial Web sites, is also produced in a completely location-independen t pattern. Furthermore, if the production of commercial electronic information is more concentrated, the question arises whether there is any relationship between the location factors of the production of Web information, on the one hand, and the type or content of information produced in given centers of information production, on the other. And, to put supply back in line with demand, one may also ask whether a local specialization in information production also brings about a dominance in information consumption in that place.