Consumer Ethics: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Purpose: Consumer ethics are the moral principles and conventions that direct people’s behaviour when they purchase, use, and discard goods and services. It addresses concerns about moral behaviour in consumer markets. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a more thorough understanding of the most recent advancements in consumer ethics research. In order to facilitate the researchers, this study provides a bibliometric analysis of consumer ethics research from 1983 to 2022.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The Scopus database was screened to identify year-wise publications, most cited papers, most prolific authors, countries and institutions. The Vosviewer software was used to analyse keyword occurrence, co-authorship network and inter-country co-authorship network.

Findings: The findings of bibliometric analysis indicate that the highest number of consumer ethics publications were published in 2021. The highly cited research paper is ‘Why ethical consumers don’t walk their talk: Towards a framework for understanding the gap between the ethical purchase intentions and actual buying behaviour of ethically minded consumers’. The most prolific author on consumer ethics is D.Arli, Department of Marketing, Australia. The highest number of papers on consumer ethics were published in the Journal of Business Ethics.

Originality/Value: This study provides direction to future researchers on the topic of consumer ethics by providing journals, authors, institutions, countries and keywords related information that are prominent in the domain of consumer ethics.

Paper Type: Review of Literature