Identifying research topics in marketing science along the past decade: a content analysis

In recent years, how marketing science is conceptualized has changed, as have the methods through which data are investigated. This reconceptualization is making a significant impact on the most important topics of this discipline. Here, a novel approach is used to analyse a collection of 1169 abstracts from articles published in the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Marketing from 2005 to 2014. We apply statistical methods to answer the following questions: How is vocabulary commonly used in marketing science? What are the most relevant topics of these journals? Which articles are the most influential? What words do authors prefer? Is the consumer among the primary topics in marketing research? A set of easy-to-read visual representations are provided to answer these questions. We highlight two main findings: (i) consumers and customers are the main topics of these marketing research journals, which emphasizes the growing interest in consumers and consumer behaviour as the core of both brick-and-mortar and online businesses; and (ii) in contrast to previous periods, product has become an essential concept, perhaps due to the emergence of new product considerations and new and enhanced interrelations.