Churn in services – A bibliometric review

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to identify the most impactful research on customer churn and to map the conceptual and intellectual structure of its field of study. Data were collected from the WoS database, comprising 338 articles published between 1995 and 2020. Several bibliometric techniques were applied, including analysis of co-words, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and co-authorship networks. R software and the Bibliometrix/Biblioshiny package were used to perform the analyses. The results identify the most active and influential authors, articles, and journals on the topic. More specifically, through co-citations and bibliographic coupling, it was possible to map the oldest articles (retrospective analysis) and the current research front (prospective analysis). The retrospective analysis, based on co-citations, revealed that the foundations of this research field are constructs such as quality of service, satisfaction, loyalty, and changing behaviors. The prospective analysis, performed through bibliographic coupling, revealed that current research is embedded in predictive analysis, clusters, data mining, and algorithms. The results provide robust guidance for further investigation in this field.