A Review of Chinese E-Commerce Research 2001-2020

Abstract

This study reviewed EC studies in China. A total of 1,982 journal articles published between 2001 and 2020 were collected from the Web of Science database. In addition, it referred to the Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and divided the research period into five-year stages. The BibExcel, UCINET, and SPSS software programs were used to conduct co-word analysis. The results indicated that (1) Stages I–IV comprised 4, 3, 4, and 4 clusters, respectively. (2) Consumer's personalized demands were considered in EC development activities ranging from the initial EC infrastructure construction to the integration of artificial-intelligence-related technology. (3) Topics regarding consumer behaviors were centered on Stages II and III, which indicated that the research on these topics was mature. (4) Stage IV explored the new research topic of integrating smart technology into the EC and indicated the characteristics of the e-market.