Special Session: A Bibliometric Review on the Role of E-Commerce for Firms’ International Growth: An Abstract

Abstract

Digital revolution has turned into a pervasive phenomenon that individuals and firms of any kinds and size cannot afford to overlook (Verhoef et al. 2017). Digital technologies are enabling many changes in firms’ boundaries driving firms’ internationalization and market entry strategies. Despite the increasing interest of firms in expanding abroad throughout online channels, there is a lack of research investigating aspects related to the use of e-commerce websites and/or platforms for firms international growth. Our paper aims to review studies on e-commerce and firm’s internationalization in order to identify the main areas of research and interest, as well as future research trends, by using a bibliometric analysis over a period of 10 years, from 2007 to 2017. To the best of our knowledge this is one of the first attempts to review the literature at the intersection between e-commerce and internationalization theory, through a bibliometric analysis. We contribute to extant literature on the field by using the importance-performance analysis to identify the most influential articles (Seebacher et al. 2013), stimulating empirical studies and moving this research area forward. The analysis revealed a recent rise in academic interest for this research field that can be explained through the “technological breakthrough” connected to the digital transformation involving every firms’ managerial area and activity with relevant effects on the different research management topic, including firms’ internationalization.