A Historical Review on Omni Channel Retailing Consumer Research

Abstract

Consumer research is crucial in omnichannel retailing and is considered a primary focus in distribution management. This article presents an objective, systematic, and comprehensive review of the current literature on omnichannel consumers. We aim to systematically map the knowledge of omnichannel consumer research's thematic structure, theory, and methodology. We employed an integrated approach to analyze 152 journal articles, using bibliometric methods, including country and citation analysis, co-citation networks, literature coupling, thematic mapping, and historical citation networks. We conducted an exploratory analysis of selected studies to examine the features of countries, journals, authors, highly cited literature, and trends in this field. Additionally, the study underwent bibliometric analyses of keyword co-occurrence, bibliographic coupling, historical citations, and co-citation analysis. The keyword co-occurrence analysis was based on the frequency and importance of keywords, identifying four distinct clusters. The findings reveal that omnichannel research is a growing field. Scholars have examined omnichannel consumers from multiple perspectives, utilizing different research methods and theoretical foundations. However, further research is needed to explore omnichannel consumers in more countries and address factors such as regional and cultural differences. This research employs advanced tools for the first time to review the literature on omnichannel consumers and provides a comprehensive view of the topics of importance discussed in the literature on omnichannel consumer management. This study will provide insights for practitioners and academic researchers to improve decision-making and develop strategies.