A bibliometric and content analysis of technological advancement applications in agricultural e-commerce

Abstract

Given the severe difficulties and challenges being faced during the current COVID-19 pandemic, agribusinesses must consider alternative means to market and sell agriproducts using e-commerce and advanced technologies. Agricultural e-commerce that utilizes advanced technologies can promote sustainable economic growth and gender equality and, therefore, helps achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. It also allows farmers access to new markets where they can bypass intermediaries, leading to higher income, less waste, and fresher produce for customers. The usefulness of using agricultural e-commerce depends on the efficiency of addressing the emerging challenges from merging perspectives of agricultural and e-commerce fields. Literature reviews addressed both fields from different perspectives, however, most literature addresses the agriculture and e-commerce fields separately, leading to unclarity in understanding the differences between agriproducts and other products. This study aims to present a comprehensive and robust roadmap of technological advancements and challenges in agricultural e-commerce through a thorough bibliometric and content analysis and provide a conceptual architecture for best practices. The bibliometric and content analysis sheds light on the agricultural e-commerce categories, challenges, and limitations. This study identifies the most influential research and topic trends, determines the topical discipline areas, and provides visions and directions for future research in the field of agricultural e-commerce. It discusses the challenges of agricultural e-commerce and agriproducts and how advanced technologies help solve such challenges. This study summarises the best practice implementation of agricultural e-commerce by providing strong logistics, implementing standardization, including information knowledge of agriproducts, and creating a traceability information system. The result of this paper is presented as a proposed conceptual architecture for agricultural e-commerce that addresses the abovementioned best practice concepts and utilizes the Blockchain and IoT technologies to provide innovative solutions for the agricultural e-commerce stakeholders. Finally, this study provides prospects for future research on advanced technologies in agricultural e-commerce.