Decoding the Dynamics of Subscription Commerce: A Bibliometric Exploration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31305/rrijm.2026.v11.n06.025Keywords:
Subscription Commerce, Subscription Services, E-commerce, Revenue Management, Pricing, Business ModelAbstract
Nexus of technology with the business leads to a plenty of opportunities in the digital market. The immediate surge of this wave made an easy and innovative platform for e-commerce. The pandemic also boosts the process of moving to a customer-centric, subscription style of e-commerce. There is a dearth of studies on the different dimensions of subscription commerce. The study tries to unearth the trends in subscription commerce through a bibliometric analysis and a comprehensive review. By using biblioshiny and Vosviewer, bibliometric data of 220 documents are analysed to find the trend in authorship, citations, keywords and emerging themes. There had been a notable growth in the publication output for last few years but still the concept remains in the emerging area which shows that there is huge possibility to develop on the concept. The analysis reveals subscription commerce as an emerging theme in the area of e-commerce with low development and low level of centrality and this paper depicts an overview on the current status of research on subscription commerce.
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