Marketing Concept Evolution: a Bibliometrics Co-Occurrence Analysis

Abstract

This study examines how scholarly research on marketing has evolved since the beginning of the millennium, and how the marketing academia has responded to the call for reform in 2006. The main purpose of the study is to find out the directions in which the marketing academia was before the call of reform and how/if the direction changed after the call of reform and has/has not evolved the marketing concept. The call for a reform in marketing academia has pointed out the number of issues which marketing has been facing, yet no proper actions were taken by the scholarly body in the past. This study investigates the topics of study which were in focus before the call of reform in comparison to the topics which were emphasized on after the call. In order to understand if changes took place, the authors used a bibliometrics approach known as co-word analysis. VOSviewer software was used for carrying out co-word (keyword co-occurrence) analysis. The data for the study was attained via the SCOPUS database. The body of literature under review is comprised of a corpus of 3,618 articles from top 11 marketing journals according to the citation index of SCOPUS database. In addition to general marketing journals, the list includes journals from some of the specialized areas such as channel and supply management, consumer behaviour, interactive and international marketing. The keyword analysis sought to identify trends in marketing research and compared findings to the call of a possible reform in the field of marketing as presented in the 2006 compilation of articles written by over 40 well-known scholars in the marketing discipline edited by Sheth and Sisodia. Through keyword analysis, the authors developed eight themes to which the keywords belonged. The keyword analysis empirically confirms and theoretically proves there is a change in trend since the call of reform which shows the changes taking place in the evolution of marketing concept. A lot of new topics appeared which the call had emphasized on, lots of the topics were left behind, and several were carried on after the call. Based on the results of the analysis we hold that the call for the reform was responded by the academia to a certain extent. These results of the study are useful to see how the academia responded to call for reform and to see the changes brought in the marketing research since the call for reform. Alongside, to the knowledge of authors, there currently is no study to see whether the call for reform by the top marketing scholars was given any importance or not, or whether if it brought any changes.