Despite its recent popularity, Internet marketing research is still in its early stages. In fact, there are a number of subject areas that need further study. In order to address these issues, researchers conducted a study that synthesized the content of the current literature on internet marketing and identified topics for further research. Using the results, this paper proposes an agenda for future research efforts.
The study was conducted in Google Scholar and the Thomson Reuters Web of Science citation database. Researchers identified 411 articles that were published on the topic of Internet marketing over the last 18 years. Using an iterative process, the researchers categorized each article into a broader set of topics. Then, a discussion was held about each topic. The discussion served as a means to synthesize the hierarchical structure of the literature.
The literature review on internet marketing was conducted in three phases. First, the authors conducted a search in Google Scholar and the Thomson Reuters Web Of Science citation database to identify Internet marketing related articles published in top marketing journals. Next, they performed a literature review to identify research strategies that are used by authors. These research strategies are grouped into six categories that are applicable to the Internet marketing literature. Using the strategy of sampling, half of the articles published in the sample utilized the Formal Theory/Literature Review strategy.
The researchers also identified articles that were not related to the Internet marketing topic. Of the articles identified, 42 were unrelated. This results in an imbalanced distribution of articles based on the research strategy. The result is that Internet marketing research is unfocused. To fill in the gaps, future research studies should utilize a wider variety of research strategies.
The research strategy that had the largest number of articles published was the Formal Theory/Literature Review. This strategy is not used in most IS research studies. The study found that about half of the articles that were categorized as “Formal Theory/Literature Review” were published in marketing journals. Despite this statistic, researchers believe that other research strategies should also be investigated. This may include a combination of strategies, such as quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, or a combination of the two. However, future studies should be more precise in their measurements.
The study also found that a special call for papers was one of the aforementioned research strategies. This special call for papers outlined six specific research topic categories. The topic of commercial exploitation of web 2.0 in consumer marketing was outlined in this special call for papers. This strategy had the highest number of articles published, which was appropriate for a literature review in the early stages of research.
A literature review in the domain of internet marketing is a valuable endeavor. However, the study found that several strategies that were used in other research papers were underrepresented. The study found that several other research strategies were not used, such as the use of secondary data and the use of social network analysis.
