Social Commerce Research in the Digital Era: A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends, Intellectual Structure, and Emerging Themes Based on Scopus Data (2020–2026)

Abstract

Social commerce has emerged as an important component of the digital economy, integrating social interaction, electronic commerce, digital marketing, and consumer engagement. This study aims to examine the research trends, intellectual structure, and emerging themes in social commerce research during 2020–2026. A bibliometric analysis was conducted using publications indexed in the Scopus database. An initial search identified 26,428 documents, which were subsequently filtered by subject area, document type, language, and open-access status, resulting in 2,821 documents for the final analysis. Data were analyzed using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix/Biblioshiny through keyword co-occurrence, density, and overlay analyses. The findings indicate that commerce, electronic commerce, social media, marketing, and social commerce constitute the core conceptual structure of the field. Meanwhile, customer engagement, influencer marketing, impulse buying, digitalization, and livestream commerce represent increasingly important research directions. The overlay analysis further reveals the emergence of artificial intelligence, large language models, and AI-enabled digital commerce as recent research frontiers. Geographically, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States are the leading contributors, while Indonesia also demonstrates a substantial contribution to the field. Overall, the findings indicate a transition from conventional e-commerce and social media research toward interactive, personalized, influencer-mediated, and intelligent social commerce. The study provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of social commerce research and identifies opportunities for future research, particularly concerning AI, algorithmic personalization, influencer commerce, livestreaming, sustainability, and cross-cultural consumer behavior.