E-Commerce System Success: Decoding The Research Trends In The Last Two Decades

Purpose: Bibliometric analysis is a statistical and computer-assisted review methodology used to understand the evolution of a study over the years and to help recognize modern potential collaborations. In addition to this, it helps to identify weaknesses and strengths in various dimensions of the study. Furthermore, it is applied to classify modern tendencies, the growth of knowledge in a specified field, and to anticipate future research tendencies of a specific field of study at different levels. The aim of this study is to deliver a bibliometric analysis of research papers published on e-commerce system success over a definite period of time.

Methodology: The present study reviewed 500 documents extracted from Web of Science over the time period of 2003–2023. In the methodology of the study, a two-step approach was applied. In the first step, keywords were selected, including “e-commerce” OR “ecommerce” AND “Business Finance” OR “Computer Science Information System” AND “Business Management,” etc. The Boolean operators “AND” and “OR” were included in the search bar of Web of Science. In the second step, VOSviewer software was used to analyze the data extracted from the database for co-citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, and co-occurrence of keywords.

Limitations: The study has some restrictions and limitations that create hurdles in generalizing the results. The first limitation is that the author reviewed articles taken only from Web of Science, while other databases such as Scopus, Google Scholar, and Dimensions were overlooked in this study. In addition to this, only published articles were taken into account for review over a specific period of time. Furthermore, only Boolean operators were applied while searching the data in the search bar, whereas the use of other search tools was ignored, such as question marks, wildcards, parentheses, and truncation.

Implications: The outcomes of this research study will help scholars understand the future trends of e-commerce system success in multiple dimensions, such as e-business and e-social commerce.

Originality: The author believes that this study contributes to the body of knowledge and helps identify opportunities related to e-commerce system success.