A bibliometric analysis of scientific literature on guilt in marketing

As a self-conscious moral emotion, guilt is a motivational force behind internalized moral standards that cause moral behavior. Marketers have been harnessing the strength of this motivational force to elicit positive consumer responses through guilt appeal in marketing communication. Guilt also affects the self-regulation of consumers and hence influences their consumption decisions. Literature on guilt in marketing has accumulated in these two subdomains in the last few decades. This study attempts to consolidate past literature by deciphering the intellectual structure. In the extant literature, information on the research landscape covering the most productive and impactful nations, institutions, journals, authors, and articles that have made significant contributions to the field is missing and constitutes a critical research gap. We want to identify these and fill the gap through this study. To achieve these objectives, we applied bibliometric techniques to 199 articles systematically drawn from the Scopus database that appeared between the years 1983 to 2021. This study identifies the most productive and impactful nations, institutions, journals, authors, and articles that have made significant contributions to the field. Further, it also deciphers the intellectual structure through the article co-citation analysis that reveals three clusters. Cluster 1 deals with foundational work on guilt; Cluster 2 explores consumption guilt in intrapersonal and interpersonal contexts; Cluster 3 investigates the guilt appeal in marketing communication.