The Landscape of CRM Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of Key Trends and Future Directions

Abstract

This study provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of customer relationship management (CRM) research from 1985 to 2024, using 3,483 records from Scopus. It identifies the most productive countries, journals, authors, and key papers, as well as six main research clusters through keyword co-occurrence analysis. Co-citation analysis reveals 1,018 articles with a minimum of 10 citations each, and we examined their methodology and focus. The study highlights the evolution of CRM research, with most publications between 2001 and 2024, and identifies six forefronts in recent CRM research (2020–2024). These insights offer a detailed understanding of CRM’s intellectual structure and emerging trends, guiding future research and practical applications in business–customer relationships.

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No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.