An Exploration of Flexible Marketing Research: Publication Trends, Research Collaboration, and Emerging Research Areas

The fast-changing business world, with strong competition and shifting consumer behaviors, requires a flexible marketing approach because the traditional strategies are insufficient to address these challenges, demanding a more adaptable framework that leverages emerging technologies and capitalizes on new opportunities. However, research specifically examining publication trends, research collaboration, and emerging areas in flexible marketing remains very limited. The main objectives of this bibliometric study are to explore research trends in flexible marketing including publication and citation trends, key contributors, influential journals, keyword co-occurrence, co-citation analysis, collaboration mapping, emerging topics, and highly cited papers. For the present study, the bibliographic data on flexible marketing literature were collected from the Web of Science (WoS) database from 2000 to 2023. The analysis indicated that research on flexible marketing developed gradually, with annual publications remaining in single digits until 2014, peaking at eight publications in both 2011 and 2014. The most productive year was 2023, with (37) publications. The USA led in output with (55) publications, followed by the UK (31) and China (21). Among prolific authors, E.S. Hariandja contributed (5) publications, while M.F. Ahammad and Zaccour G. contributed (4) each. The University of Florida and the University of Leeds were the most productive institutions, each with (5) publications. The Journal of Business Research was the leading journal with (12) publications, followed by the International Marketing Review (10) and the European Journal of Operational Research (5). Prominent author keywords included "Dynamic Marketing Capabilities," "Marketing," and "Dynamic Capabilities," while key research areas spanned "Business & Economics," "Computer Science," and "Agriculture." The study also highlighted significant international collaborations, with the USA and China leading with (6) joint publications, followed by collaborations involving Canada, Australia, and Portugal, each with (4) publications. The findings of the study are crucial for policymakers, scholars and practitioners who want to understand and adapt to the changing field of flexible marketing. This study represents a pioneering effort to analyze recent research in the field of flexible marketing research utilizing data from the WoS database.