Competitiveness of retailers in the context of digitalization: a literature review

Abstract

This article aims to provide a review of published academic research on the competitiveness of retailers in the context of digitalization. The input was sourced from published works indexed in the Scopus base for 2000-2020. The analysis was conducted in four stages: topical trends; keyword research; citation analysis; content analysis of the most-cited published works. The findings helped to track the evolution of research in the analyzed domain and identify four stages (2000-2003, 2004-2010, 2011-2016, 2017-present time) by distinct variation of research activity and the scope of covered problems. The findings of this review can substantiate further development of methodological approaches to studying the competitiveness of retailers in the context of digitalization and can help researchers to make more justified choices of research problems and practitioners to navigate the complicated transformations of managing competitiveness in the wake of digitalization.