Mapping the Field of Social Media Engagement: A Literature Review Using Bibliometric Analysis

 From: FIIB Business Review

Engaging with customers on social media is as essential as the company’s products or services. According to Statista, there were five billion Internet users worldwide in April 2022, accounting for 63% of the global population. Out of this, social media users accounted for 4.65 billion. Marketing practitioners and academicians identify customer engagement in social media as a significant marketing result. Social media engagement has been extensively used as a marketing and relationship tool in various sectors. In the tourism sector, customer engagement on social media has become crucial for organizations to develop brand attachment and consumer trust, which is essential for consumers to become brand loyal. This has created a need for managers to be proactive in generating posts that enhance consumers’ emotional attachment to social media brands. Higher education institutes also focused on using social media to interact and have quality relationships with students. The research on the use of social media by shipping companies elaborated how effectively companies use a set of tools for retrieving, processing and analysing massive volumes of customer service-related communications between shipment firms and their customers. Social media engagement came to the rescue of Western luxury brands in China by creating a social presence and interacting with customers via social media, which earlier faced issues of being conservative, distant and inactive brands. Mobile wallet firms use social media for engaging with customers and acquiring them, and for managing relationships for marketing and promotional purposes.

Few systematic literature review studies have been conducted in the area of consumer engagement that used bibliometric techniques (citation, co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence techniques) and content analysis. A few studies were conducted entirely on social media engagement using meta-analysis and systematic literature review. No studies have been conducted purely on social media engagement using bibliometric techniques.

Given the diversity of literature on social media engagement, a detailed study in the context of a bibliometric analysis is required to investigate the multidisciplinary dimensionality of social media engagement in the last decade since its inception in 2011. Bibliometric analysis has been preferred over meta-analysis for the systematic literature review as bibliometric analysis offers a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature, whereas meta-analysis is a statistical technique for calculating the mean and variance of underlying population effects from a group of empirical investigations that are addressing the same research question. The study attempts to present an overview of the field of social media engagement and extract the most influential documents, authors and journals irrespective of the study type. This will not only acknowledge the accomplishments of significant researchers and journals but also throw light on possible future research prospects in the subject that has grown in breadth, depth and topical keywords, such as platforms, topics, applications, research methodologies and emerging trends.