Shopping Tourism: A Bibliometric Review from 1979 to 2021

Abstract

The discipline of shopping tourism has seen a surge in published research in recent years, covering a wide range of topics and issues. However, there are surprisingly few reviews and/or bibliometric studies to review and visually map the literature in this field of research. As a result, the present work has employed a comprehensive bibliometric and systematic review concerning shopping tourism-related articles published in academic journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science databases between 1979 and 2021. Two methodologies were used in this bibliometric analysis. The first is performance analysis, which analyzes the contributions of the components that comprise research in shopping tourism. The second method is scientific mapping, which outlines the connections (i.e., intellectual, social, and conceptual structure) between facets related to shopping tourism. Using Bradford's and Lotka's laws, the research revealed a remarkable increase in shopping tourism sources, authors, and articles, reflecting a substantial evolutionary curve of this research theme. Various affiliations and countries have contributed considerably to shopping tourism research during the period. The analysis of science mapping produced a substantial understanding of shopping tourism's social, intellectual, and conceptual structure. This review article provides several implications for research via perspicuous overviews and insights into shopping tourism, Big Data, and its knowledge structures. It also holds a variety of practical implications for tourism policymakers, destination management organizations (DMOs), and tourism marketers regarding the key themes, new trends, and main contributors to shopping tourism research over four decades of research.