Industrial-buying research 1965-2015: review and analysis

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying knowledge structure and evolution of industrial-buying research published between 1965 and 2015.Design/methodology/approachBibliometric analysis is performed on 357 relevant papers (using principal component analysis and natural language processing, using VantagePoint® tools, used to generate bubble maps, auto-correlation maps and Aduna cluster maps), demonstrating how various factors involved in industrial buying have evolved, their degree of correlation with each other and the interrelationships of multiple factors concerning their co-occurrences.FindingsThe systematic mapping of industrial-buying research would illustrate the development of the significant factors in industrial-buying research. This paper provides both a global perspective on the leading countries and journals in the field and a robust roadmap for further investigation in this field.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is limited to the data considered for analysis and may, therefore, overlook or underestimate some work that has not been captured while filtering databases related to industrial buying.Practical implicationsThis paper facilitates near-future projection and trend analysis in industrial-buying research.Originality/valueThe methodology used is unique to the field of business-to-business marketing.