Knowledge mapping of social commerce research: a visual analysis using CiteSpace

Social commerce has rapidly developed as a new area in electronic commerce field and has risen the attention of both researchers and practitioners. This paper investigated the intellectual structure, development, and evolution of social commerce quantitatively to provide a systematic review of the current state of the social commerce literature. We used a visualization tool called CiteSpace and mapped our result into the I-model for classification. According to 503 articles focusing on social commerce with associated 12,089 references, we have identified the most influential authors, institutions, publications, keywords, and references in this field, as well as the hot topics and future trends. In addition, we have developed the visual network of these research elements through CiteSpace for a deep level analysis, especially for future research trends prediction. Finally, our combination of bibliometric methods and a systematic review makes for a better understanding in the development of social commerce for both researchers and practitioners.