Influencer Marketing and Consumer Behavioural Response: A Bibliometric Review with VOS Viewer Analysis and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

Influencer marketing has progressively expanded as a tactic used by digital marketers to broadcast product information to examine consumer buying patterns influenced by influencers through curated narrative content. This review paper analyses the influencer marketing literature to explore how psychological and social constructs impact behavioural responses by adopting a Bibliometric Analysis with Bibliometrix R-tool, and BiblioShiny application, followed by keyword analysis of the network with “Visualisation of Similarities” (VOS) viewer software to examine the studies on influencers from 2001 to 2025. This study utilised the Scopus database to identify the author contributions, keyword analysis, thematic trends, and methodological approaches, and subsequently employed delimiters for data analysis and visualisation. This review outlines the evolution and effectiveness of influencer marketing in consumer behavioural outcomes by analysing the performance of materials, regions, and key terms to focus on the conceptual framework. Overall, the findings from this study focus on the trends, methodologies, concepts, emerging topics, themes, theories, constructs, context, platforms, research streams, sources, and keywords. Therefore, the study identified research gaps in new emerging communication theories and empirical bias towards developed nations over developing and underdeveloped economies. Further study should focus on influencer new age characteristics, such as narrative creativity, content strategies, personal branding and self-congruence, which are the major research gaps in the study. Future research proposes integrating emerging communication theories, evolving influencer characteristics, and culturally diverse markets to enhance more effective marketing decisions.