Online presence, visibility and reputation: a systematic literature review in management studies

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this 22-year paper is to synthetize business and management literature in the context of online presence, online visibility and online reputation concepts. In particular, this paper aims to generalize the analysis by investigating the level of interest of the Internet, digital and interactive marketing-focused literature, as well as the more general business and management one towards these topics. Design/methodology/approach To identify the existence or otherwise of an online presence, visibility and reputation definition, as well as an index for measuring them, a systematic review and a content analysis process were performed on 199 articles categorized over 1997-2018. Findings The findings highlight the absence of clear and shared online presence, visibility and reputation definitions; the absence of unanimously accepted indexes for measuring them; and the identification of a sequence relationship between the three investigated constructs. Research limitations/implications The paper underlines the need for both theoretical and empirical contributions to reduce the complexity characterizing the business and management literature focused on these topics. Originality/value The current study brings out interesting directions for future research studies by systematizing all the articles devoted to the online presence, visibility and reputation concepts from a business and management perspective.