Global Research Trends in Handling Consumer Messages on Social Net-

working Sites: A Bibliometric Analysis

Nur Adiha Mohamad Yunus

1
Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Business
Email: a20a1651@siswa.umk.edu.my*

Abstract
Social network sites are web-based services that enable users to create a public
or semi-public profile within a limited system, articulate a list of other users with
whom they have a connection, and watch and navigate their list of connections as
well as those made by others within the system. Firms increasingly use social net-
work sites to reach out to customers and proactively intervene with observed con-
sumer messages. Despite intentions to enhance customer satisfaction by extending
customer service, sometimes these interventions are received negatively by con-
sumers. This study aims to comprehensively examine the area of research on Han-
dling Consumer Messages on Social Networking Sites by performing a bibliometric
analysis of 493 publications between 2021 until 2023 from the Scopus database.
The findings showed that a better understanding of the impact of privacy concerns
on consumer behavior in the context of firm–consumer interactions on social net-
work sites, extend the applicability of privacy calculus theory, and contribute to
complaint and compliment management literature. Findings demonstrate that feel-
ings of privacy are an element to consider when handling consumer messages on
social media, but also that privacy concerns may be overcome if an intervention is
perceived as useful enough.

Keywords: Consumer complaints, consumer messages, customer service, online

service, social network sites.
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1 INTRODUCTION
Social networking sites have become an integral part of our daily lives. From
MySpace and Friendster to the more recent development of Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram, these platforms have transformed the way we connect and communicate
with people. We can share our thoughts, ideas, and experiences with a global audi-
ence, connect with friends and family, and even meet new individuals through social
networking sites.
Surprisingly, the role of privacy concerns—a topic that has piqued the interest of
scholars and practitioners in the digital marketing era—has gone unexplored in the
context of online customer service. We contend that consumer concerns about pri-
vacy may play a critical role in understanding the variance in consumer responses
to corporations' online initiatives. Therefore, the research questions of this study
are:
RQ1: What is the trend of research in Handling Consumer Messages on Social Net-
working Sites published to date?
RQ2: Which countries contribute significantly to the study in Handling Consumer
Messages on Social Networking Sites?
RQ3: Who are the most prolific authors in Handling Consumer Messages on Social
Networking Sites?
RQ4: What are the most influential publications in Handling Consumer Messages
on Social Networking Sites?
RQ5: What are the main keywords of scientific research in Handling Consumer
Messages on Social Networking Sites?

2 METHODOLOGY
This bibliometric study examined the publications collected in the Scopus science
database, compared to the previous bibliometric study of scientific journals, books,
and conference proceedings, which has made extensive use of Scopus (e.g., Filieri,
R., Chaturvedi, P., Kulshreshtha, K.). Scopus enables data access through the
Search, Discover, and Analyse options to download 487 research publications' data
fields, such as source title, abstract, author keywords, year of publication, research
area, affiliation, and document type. Additionally, the Scopus platform is frequently
regarded as one of the largest curated databases (Singh et al., 2021; Leydesdorff et
al., 2010). The recently revised (August 2020) Scopus content coverage guide indi-
cates that it currently contains over 1.7 billion cited references. Hence, this database
can provide a comprehensive overview of the world's scientific research output.

3.1 Search strategy

Bibliometric analysis was performed by the Scopus database as of August 2022.

The search query TITLE ("Handling Consumer Messages on Social Networking
Sites ") has been performed in the Scopus database to search for relevant publica-
tions in any language. As titles serve as the first thing that readers see (Zakaria et
al., 2021), we use a title-only search strategy to ensure that the found publications
are related to school bullying as the key topic and to prevent a high publication
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drop-out rate (Kücher & Feldbauer-Durstmüller, 2019). Figure 1 shows our search
strategy. The search retrieved an initial sample of 487 publications.

3.2 Data analysis

We used performance analysis in bibliometric studies (Donthu et al., 2021) to
describe trends in school bullying research publishing (RQ1), as well as contrib-
uting nations (RQ2), publications (RQ3), sources (RQ4), and keywords (RQ5). Mi-
crosoft Excel was used to compute the frequency and percentage of each publica-
tion, as well as to generate the necessary visualisations. Meanwhile, the citation
metrics were determined using Harzing's Publish and Perish programme. In addi-
tion, we enhanced our investigation by using VOSviewer to do a science mapping
analysis, (Version 1.6.19). VOSViewer is a free software tool that extracts citation
information, bibliographical information, and keywords to perform network visual-
isation of author co-authorship and co-citation. Using term co-occurrence analysis
and document bibliographic coupling analysis, the same tool was utilised to map
the intellectual structure of social networking sites.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, we show the research we conducted to determine the documents in
the Scopus database on Handling Consumer Messages on Social Networking Sites
by year.

3.1 Documents by Type

The figure 2 depicts the amount of documents processed on Handling Consumer
Messages on Social Networking Sites by year. The inaugural report was published
in 2021, and there was a rising tendency through 2022. The quantity of documents
on Handling Consumer Messages on Social Networking Sites starts to decline after
2022.
By assessing document categories and subject area data, this study also
tried to establish where Handling Consumer Messages on Social Networking Sites
materials were published. Table 1 highlights the various types of documents that
have been published on social networking sites. As can be seen, journal articles
account for the vast bulk of the papers, accounting for 427 (87.7% of the total). The
articles are followed by a conference paper (n = 19, 3.9%), a book (n = 18, 3.7%),
and a review (n = 15, 3.1%). Other publications (book chapters and editorials) ac-
counted for less than 1% of all texts.

3.2 Documents by Subject Area

As shown in Table 2, the subject areas of 39.7% (n = 341) of the Handling Con-
sumer Messages on Social Networking Sites documents are business, management,
and accounting.

3.3 Documents by Countries

Table 3 shows the top ten nations where the majority of social networking site pub-
lications originate. The United States led the way (138%), followed by China (80%)
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and Mexico (58%). The top three contributors came from three different continents:
North America, Europe, and Asia.

3.4 Documents by Authors

Table 4 lists the most productive researchers involved in documents on
handling consumer messages on social networking sites. It should be noted that the
list only includes those who have published at least six documents. Filieri, R. is the
most productive author, with 6 documents. Meanwhile, Chaturvedi, P.,
Kulshreshtha, K., and Tripathi, V. share second position on the list of authors who
have contributed the most, each with four books.
The authorship connection in Handling Consumer Messages on Social
Networking Sites papers is depicted in Figure 4, with three distinct groups marked
by various colours. Although cross-cluster links exist, these clusters imply ties
among authors who work on comparable topics. The amount of citations is repre-
sented by the nodes, and the link represents the co-citation relationship.

3.5 Documents per year by Source

After restricting our analysis to document categories designated as articles, Table 5
displays five journals that published at least 12 studies in the topic of processing
consumer messages on social networking sites.

3.6 Top Keywords

The overlay visualisation in Figure 5 illustrates which author's social media key-
word is the most popular and can be used to describe research hotspots. We
changed some of the author keywords in the CSV format file due to the non-unity
of single and plural keywords and synonyms in some publications, such as unify-
ing "consumer complaint" as "consumer complaints," "consumer message" as
"consumer messages," and "customer service" as "customer service," so these
terms would be accurately represented in the data analysis.

Discussion
Social networking sites are web-based services that allow users to construct a public
or semi-public profile within a restricted system, articulate a list of other users with
whom they have a connection, and monitor and navigate their list of connections as
well as those made by others within the system.
Handling Consumer Messages on Social Networking Sites is a study that
focuses on 487 documents selected from the Scopus database. It should be noted
that the first Scopus study in Handling Consumer Messages on Social Networking
Sites was published in 2018 and steadily reduced until 2023, resulting in academic
groups becoming aware of social networking sites and undertaking research begin-
ning in 2021. The most surprising conclusion was a 226% rise in publications over
the previous year in 2022. However, since this research was completed in February,
the quantity of publications has decreased in 2023.
The top ten were led by the United States (29.55%), China (11.67%), and
China (17.13%). The VOSviewer overlay depicts collaboration beginning in 2021,
with China being the most active in the early phase (2021-2023), linking to the US
 5

and the UK. It should be noted that the United States was the most cooperative
country during the second phase. (2021–2023). Authors have recently (2023 on-
wards) partnered with China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Author
partnerships across continents are various, as observed. However, because social
networking sites are a global concern, research from underrepresented nations is
needed to properly understand the phenomena and guide educational policy and
practises.
Concerning the third research question, which aimed to identify the most
prolific authors on Social Networking Sites, a co-citation analysis was performed.
Filieri, R. and Chaturvedi, P. are the most prolific authors in the field of Social
Networking Sites, followed by Kulshreshtha, K. Co-citation analysis shows three
clusters of Social Networking Sites authors, with the first cluster, including Tripathi.
It is interesting to note that Agnihotri, D., Antonetti, P., Grewal, D., Liebrecht, C.,
Rui, H., and Villarroel Ordenes, F. are some of the most prolific researchers on
Social Networking Sites, highlighting the quality of Social Networking Sites publi-
cations.
We also identify the most productive source journals for Handling Consumer Mes-
sages on Social Networking Sites research, which are the Journal of Business Re-
search, the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Frontiers in Psychology,
Psychology and Marketing, Sustainability, and Switzerland. Finally, the top key-
words for processing consumer messages on social networking sites include "ado-
lescents," "consumer complaints," "consumer messages," and "customer service."

4. CONCLUSION
This study provided an overview of research trends in Handling Consumer Mes-
sages on Social Networking Sites based on 487 papers in the Scopus database.
Publication growth has been increasing over the last 20 years and is projected to
continue. We discovered that nations (for example, the United States, the United
Kingdom, and China) and authors (for example, Filieri, R., and Chaturvedi, P.)
had a large number of publications and strong international cooperation. As a re-
sult, these institutions may provide opportunities for scholars from other nations to
expand their research cooperation. The most active journals are the Journal of
Business Research and Retailing and Consumer Services, and the most referenced
journal is the Journal of Business Research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I'd want to convey my gratitude and appreciation to my lecturer, Dr Siti Afiqah
Binti Zainuddin, for her assistance in making this assignment a success. His assis-
tance and encouragement aided me at every level of developing my concept. I'd also
like to thank my friends for making my defence fun, as well as for your kind remarks
and thoughts.

References
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Joris Demmers, Willemijn M. van Dolen & Jesse W.J. Weltevreden (2018) Han-
dling Consumer Messages on Social Networking Sites: Customer Service or Pri-
vacy Infringement? International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 22:1, 8-35, DOI:
10.1080/10864415.2018.1396110

Ishak, M. S. (2023). Global Research Trends in School Bullying: A Bibliometric

Analysis. https://doi.org/10.36941/jesr-2023-0009

M. R. (2022). Social Networking Site. https://www.techopedia.com/defini-

tion/4956/social-networking-site-sns
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Topic Screening
Topic Scope &
Eligibility

Database: Scopus
Scope & Coverage Search Field: Article Title
Time Frame: All

Keyword & TITLE (Handling

Search String Consumer Messages on
Social Networking
Sites

Data Extracted 4 April 2023

Screening

Record Identified
& Screened n = 487

Record Removed n=0

Included

Record Included for Bibliometric Analysis n = 487

Figure 1: Flow diagram of the search strategy.

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Figure 2: Trend in the documents by year in Handling Consumer Messages

on Social Networking Sites (2021 – 2023).

Table 1: Document Type

Document Type Documents Percentage (%)
Article 427 87.7
Conference Paper 19 3.9
Book 18 3.7
Review 15 3.1
Book Chapter 7 1.4
Editorial 1 0.2

Figure 3: Documents by Type

Table 2: Subject Area

Subject area Documents Percentage (%)

Business, Management and Accounting 341 39.7
Social Sciences 129 15.0
Computer Science 82 9.5
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Subject area Documents Percentage (%)

Economics, Econometrics and Finance 62 7.2
Psychology 60 7.0
Decision Sciences 37 4.3
Engineering 35 4.1
Arts and Humanities 33 3.8
Environmental Science 25 2.9
Energy 17 2.0
Medicine 17
Mathematics 9
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 4
Earth and Planetary Sciences 2
4.5
Materials Science 2
Health Professions 1
Multidisciplinary 1
Neuroscience 1
Nursing 1
Physics and Astronomy 1

Figure 3: Documents by Subject Area

Table 3: The top 10 Countries contributed to the documents.

Country/Territory Documents %
United States 138 29.5503212
China 80 17.130621
United Kingdom 58 12.4197002
India 48 10.2783726
Australia 35 7.49464668
France 30 6.42398287
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Germany 22 4.71092077
Spain 21 4.49678801
Canada 19 4.06852248
Netherlands 16 3.4261242
TOTAL 467 100

Figure 4: Documents by Country

Figure 5: Overlay visualisation of the co-authorship by countries.

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Figure 6: Documents by Author

Table 4: Top authors contributing to Handling Consumer Messages on Social

Networking Sites

Figure 7: Network visualisation map of the author's co-citation analysis

Table 5: Most active source

Source Title Total number of publications
2021 2022 2023
Journal of Business Research 12 12 4
Journal of Retailing and Con- 7 6 6
sumer Services
Frontiers in Psychology 2 10 1
Psychology and Marketing 1 5 6
Sustainability and Switzerland 4 5 2
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Figure 8: Document per year by Source

Figure 9: Overlay visualisation of the author's keyword.