Review of electronic word-of-mouth based on bibliometrics

Abstract

The Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is recognized as one of the most influential resources of information transmission, especially in consumer purchase decisions. There exists an increasing trend in the number of publications related to the eWOM these years. In order to explore the specific developments in this field, a detailed overview of eWOM is presented. Different from other reviews focusing on qualitative analysis, we quantitatively analyze the relevant articles of eWOM with the bibliometric method, using 1000 eWOM-related publications retrieved from Web of Knowledge during 1998 and 2019, to ensure the objectivity and effectiveness of the results. To reveal the contributions of journals, authors, institutions and regions, leading individuals and collaboration patterns were identified. Furthermore, the topic-method mapping network (TMMN), a relationship network with two types of nodes for topic keywords and method keywords, was presented to demonstrate the hot research topics and corresponding methods as well as the relationships between them. Finally, some suggestions were provided for review websites. This study offers a valuable orientation for scholars focusing on eWOM processes.