Visualisation of global research trends and future research directions of digital marketing in small and medium enterprises using bibliometric analysis

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to undertake a bibliometric analysis of digital marketing research in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study examines papers over the last two decades and performed performance analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling and scientific mapping.Design/methodology/approachThe study examines 247 documents retrieved from the Scopus database using bibliometric analysis, performance analysis and thematic clustering. The study looked at the scientific productivity of papers, prolific authors, most influencing papers, institutions and nations, keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, co-citations and authorship and country collaborations. VOSviewer was employed as a tool in the research to conduct the performance analysis and thematic clustering.FindingsThe most productive year was 2021 with 56 publications and the most impactful institute and countries are the University of Birmingham, UK, and the country is United Kingdom, respectively. Similarly, the most influential journal is “Industrial Marketing Management”, and the most productive journal is “International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising”. Furthermore, the most cited article is “Usage, barriers and measurement of social media marketing: An exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B brands”. The authors also identified five thematic clusters of digital marketing research in SMEs.Research limitations/implicationsIt informs and directs researchers on the current state of study in the field of digital marketing literature in SMEs. It also outlines future research directions in this field.Originality/valueThis is the first study which provides the performance analysis and scientific mapping of the digital marketing literature in SMEs.