Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing: A Bibliometric and Visualization Analysis of the Literature between the Years 1994 and 2020

Tarcia Camily Cavalcante Quezado,Ricardo Filipe Ramos,Nuno Fortes,William Quezado Figueiredo Cavalcante

doi:10.3390/su14031694

Abstract

Several studies explored the effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on marketing. However, bibliometric research that organizes this production is scarce. Thus, this study aims to provide a bibliometric view of marketing-related CSR research, identifying this field’s state-of-the-art literature. Two thousand and forty-two articles were collected through the Web of Science (WoS) platform. Data were analyzed using VOSviewer software to map the data graphically. The results show that: (a) the literature on CSR in the marketing area is growing; (b) five articles alone accounted for 9940 citations, and there are several prolific authors; (c) the prominent journals identified in this research published 42.16% of the total; (d) The “Journal of Business Ethics” is the leader in the number of publications, followed by “Sustainability,” which has shown strong growth in recent years, and; (e) The US is the leading country, according to the number of articles and citations. The keyword trending network analysis revealed that CSR is becoming a strategic marketing approach for companies. This study offers an insight into the state-of-the-art and trends identification in CSR and marketing.

Highlights

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been studied and put into practice in organizations and has become an essential subject in the literature from a strategic perspective [1].Studies show that companies’ positive consumer evaluations and behaviors start from the customers’ perception of seeing CSR initiatives [2,3]
The first known article published relating the theme of CSR with marketing dates from 1994 and was published in the Journal of Business Ethics with the title “Predicting
This study analyzes the leading journals, authors, institutions, and keywords, showing that: (a) the literature on CSR in the field of marketing is growing; (b) five articles alone accounted for 9940 citations, and several prolific authors concentrate a significant portion of the research; (c) the main journals identified in this research published 42.16% of the 2042 articles included in this review; (d) the “Journal of Business Ethics” is the leader in the number of publications, followed by “Sustainability,” which has shown strong growth in recent years; (e) in terms of documents and citations, the United States of America is the leading country on this topic with 20.42% of publications; (f) according to a keyword trend network analysis, CSR is becoming a strategic marketing approach for companies

Summary

Introduction

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been studied and put into practice in organizations and has become an essential subject in the literature from a strategic perspective [1].Studies show that companies’ positive consumer evaluations and behaviors start from the customers’ perception of seeing CSR initiatives [2,3]. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been studied and put into practice in organizations and has become an essential subject in the literature from a strategic perspective [1]. Organizations take practical steps towards these social responsibility activities to understand their relevance in the business environment [4]. Given the relevance of CSR activities and their effects on stakeholders, marketers see this topic as a vital source for implementing marketing strategies and improving companies’. Some studies have investigated the impact of CSR on consumer satisfaction [6] and improving brand reputation performance [7] and its implications on satisfactory consumer ratings [8]. Bibliometric studies were found that related CSR with communication (e.g., [9,10]) and marketing with socially responsible brand communication [11].

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