Title: Mapping the intellectual structure of electronic commerce research: 1997-2006

Authors: Zhenzhong Ma

Addresses: Odette School of Business, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, Ontario, N9B 3P4, Canada

Abstract: The past decades have seen extensive research on electronic commerce (e-commerce). The broad-based organisational and technological development in e-commerce research requires categorisation to be understood in its entirety. To profile the intellectual structure of e-commerce research, this study uses bibliometric and social network analysis techniques to investigate the intellectual pillars of the e-commerce literature. This study analyses 30,509 citations of over 1600 papers on e-commerce published between 1997 and 2006, resulting in an intellectual structure of e-commerce studies. The mapping of ten years of e-commerce studies presents a solid foundation for knowledge management in e-commerce area and helps identify the invisible knowledge network that traces the evolution of e-commerce research.

Keywords: citation analysis; e-commerce research; electronic commerce; invisible networks; knowledge networks; social network analysis; bibliometric analysis; e-commerce literature; knowledge management; literature review.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEB.2010.030714

International Journal of Electronic Business, 2010 Vol.8 No.1, pp.16 - 30

Published online: 31 Dec 2009 *

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