Thirty Years of Sustainable Marketing Research: Bibliometric Analysis and Mapping the Research Trends in Sustainability Context

Abstract

For over five decades, sustainability concepts have been implemented and investigated in marketing, yet the issues we face today remain serious. The objective of the research is to analyze the evolving landscape of "sustainable marketing" by utilizing bibliometrics, such as top keywords, most cited articles, most cited authors, and leading journals, in order to study current trends and outline future research directions within the sustainable marketing domain. The appropriate articles from suitable sources were shortlisted from the Scopus database using the search term “sustainable marketing,” where 384 articles (as of June 2025) from the years 1996 to 2025 were identified, and bibliometric analysis was performed with the help of VOSviewer software. The findings of the study will be of significant use for researchers, academicians, and other stakeholders in the sustainable marketing research domain. The future research directions mentioned in this study will motivate the researchers for further studies in the sustainability movement. This is an original article contributing to the domain of sustainable marketing by providing research insights and offering future research directions. The present paper is an up-to-date bibliometric analysis study in the domain of sustainable marketing post-COVID-19. This study is very useful for researchers in sustainability in general and sustainable marketing in particular.