A Bibliometric Review on Social Marketing Research: 1971–2020

A broad thematic review of Social Marketing is analysed where 1566 scientific papers (191 keywords and 20455 citations) were extracted from the Web of Science from 1971 to 2020. Three main periods are identified (1971–2004, 2005–2013, and 2014–2020) where the research focus changes. Recently, health has remained a major area of interest, associated with a substantial amount of research on behaviour (the primary focus of the research domain). Other prominent fields are related to adolescents, emotions and children, among others. This paper responds to the need to analyse, for an extended period, the development of this field of research.