Examining 50 years of social marketing through a bibliometric and science mapping analysis
ISSN: 2042-6763
Article publication date: 10 February 2022
Issue publication date: 6 June 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Through a bibliometric analysis and scientific mapping, this study aims to examine research in the field of social marketing over the past 50 years and to propose a future research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
A bibliometric analysis based on keyword co-occurrences is used to analyze 1,492 social marketing articles published from 1971 to 2020. The articles were extracted from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. SciMAT software was used, which provides a strategic diagram of topics, clusters, networks and relationships, allowing for the identification and assessment of relational connections among social marketing topics.
Findings
The results show that advertising, fear and children were some of the driving themes of social marketing over the past 50 years. In addition, the analysis identifies four promising areas for future research: consumption, intervention, strategy and analytical perspectives.
Research limitations/implications
This analysis can serve as a reference guide for future research in the field of social marketing. This study focused on quantitative analysis. An in-depth qualitative analysis would be a valuable future extension.
Originality/value
This research offers a unique systematic analysis of the progression of social marketing scholarship and provides a guide for future research related to social marketing. Importantly, this work suggests crucial issues that have not yet been sufficiently developed.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the University of Castilla-La Mancha for the financial support provided for this research under the Call for Research Groups (Reference: 2020-GRIN-28990).
Citation
Salgado Sequeiros, J., Molina-Collado, A., Gómez-Rico, M. and Basil, D. (2022), "Examining 50 years of social marketing through a bibliometric and science mapping analysis", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 296-314. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-06-2021-0145
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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