Consumer ethics: An extensive bibliometric review (1995–2021)

Abstract

Nowadays, consumer ethics represents a relevant field of review. There have been some attempts to conduct literature reviews; however, these have been few and incomplete. For this reason, this paper follows two main objectives: (1) to develop a performance analysis to measure the impact/perceptibility of academic production on consumer ethics (most cited authors, journals and themes) and (2) to visually present the scientific structure by themes of research in consumer ethics as well as its evolution along time. Using SciMAT software, a comprehensive thematic review is discussed. 568 scientific papers (2569 keywords and 8642 citations) were retrieved from the Web of Science from 1995 to 2021 (May). Our results show three main periods with two main research themes (consumer and corporate social responsibility), which remain relevant themes at the time. Also, some new themes that promote ethical consumption have gained weight or appear over time, some of which are linked to the marketing field (such as experiences, satisfaction, attitudes or privacy among others).