Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
DOI https://doi.org/10.31876/er.v6i44.834
Analysis of the global scientific production on virtual reality
as a marketing tool in Scopus
Análisis de la producción científica global sobre realidad virtual como
herramienta del marketing en Scopus
Nube Estefanía Venegas Sánchez *
Diego Vinicio Orellana Bueno*
Pablo Javier Pérez Jara*
Maria Del Pilar Cabrera Hermida *
Received: July 22, 2022
Approved: January 19, 2023
* Marketing Engineer, Master in Business
Management, Professor at Universidad Católica de
Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador.
nvenegass@ucacue.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5398-1557
* Doctor of Philosophy, PhD. Specialty in
Administration, Cuenca, Ecuador.
dorellana@ucacue.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7320-8684
* Master in Computer Education, Cuenca, Ecuador.
pperezj@ucacue.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8538-5955
* Master in Digital Marketing and E-Commerce,
Cuenca, Ecuador.
pcabrerah@ucacue.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1536-490X
Abstract
The aim of this study was to describe the global scientific production
on virtual reality as a marketing tool contained in the SCOPUS
database, in order to map its trends and implications. The study is
descriptive and cross-sectional under a bibliometric approach. The
results respond to the analysis of bibliometric indicators of
production, visibility, impact and collaboration. It is concluded that
between 1993 and 2021 there is a total of 1046 articles that address
the topic of virtual reality as a marketing tool, showing a sustained
increase in its scientific production, demonstrating the interest in its
study in recent decades.
Keywords:
Marketing, Virtual Reality, Scientific Production,
Bibliometric.
Cite this:
Venegas, N., Orellana, D., Pérez, P.,
Cabrera, M. (2023). Analysis of the
global scientific production on
virtual reality as a marketing tool in
Scopus. Espirales. Revista
Multidisciplinaria de investigación
científica, 7 (45), 50-
Nube Estefania Venegas Sanchez, Diego Vinicio Orellana Bueno, Pablo Javier Perez Jara, Maria Del Pilar Cabrera
Hermida *.
Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
51
Introduction
Nowadays, consumers are increasingly interacting through the Internet to share their
opinions, knowledge and experiences (de Valck et al., 2009). (de Valck et al., 2009)..
The adoption of three-dimensional environments such as virtual reality in business
practices is increasing and requires a multidisciplinary research approach for its study,
recognizing the different scenarios in which they operate, areas such as automotive
(Henriques and Winkler, 2021), commerce (Krasonikolakis et al., 2021) and retail
(Krasonikolakis et al., 2021). (Krasonikolakis et al., 2021), tourism (Krasonikolakis et al.,
2021)tourism (Guttentag, 2010)education (Castellanos-Quiroga and Melo-Castro, 2019;
Vías et al., 2018)health sciences (Harichane and Ayestas, 2020; Pérez-Salas, 2008),
among others.
Thus, while virtual reality technology continues to evolve (Rigueros Bello, 2017; Vidal et
al. (Rigueros Bello, 2017; Vidal et al., 2017)the number and importance of such
applications is undoubtedly expanding, thus, the number of publications that address
the subject is increasing, making it necessary to map the scientific contributions to
determine the evolution of virtual reality and its possible relationship with marketing.
Therefore, the objective of this study was to describe the global scientific production
on virtual reality as a marketing tool contained in the SCOPUS database, with the aim
of mapping its trends and implications to encourage the execution of future studies.
Materials and methods
The research is qualitative, descriptive and cross-sectional. Bibliometric analysis was
used to map the scientific literature on virtual reality and marketing and thus identify
the behavior of publications worldwide (Tomás-Górriz and Tomás-Casterá, 2018).. The
SCOPUS database was used to identify the papers.
To construct the search equation, the thesaurus "Marketing" and the term "Virtual
Reality" were used, in English and Spanish, concatenated with the Boolean terms AND
Abstract
El objetivo de este estudio fue describir la producción científica
global sobre realidad virtual como herramienta del marketing
contenida en la base de datos SCOPUS, con la finalidad de elaborar
un mapa sobre sus tendencias e implicaciones. El estudio es
descriptivo y transversal bajo un enfoque bibliométrico. Los
resultados responden al análisis de indicadores bibliométricos de
producción, visibilidad, impacto y colaboración. Se concluye que
entre 1993 y 2021 existe un total de 1046 artículos que abordan la
temática de realidad virtual como una herramienta para el marketing,
evidenciando un incremento sostenido de su producción científica,
demostrando el interés por su estudio en las últimas décadas.
Palabras Claves:
Marketing, Realidad Virtual, Producción Científica,
Bibliométrico.
Analysis of the global scientific production on virtual reality as a marketing tool in Scopus
Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
52
and OR. As a result, 1,183 documents were found, linking the descriptors to the title,
abstract and keywords.
For the selection of documents, only those articles published in completed years were
considered without considering a specific SCOPUS thematic area, in addition, they had
to be articles, reviews, books, book chapters and those presented at scientific
conferences, and no distinction was made between languages.
After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the titles, abstracts and keywords
were read to check their relevance and adherence to the subject of the study, and 1,046
manuscripts were selected for bibliometric analysis.
The database was constructed using Microsoft Excel, including the year, type of
document, area of knowledge, authors, country and institutions of affiliation to
elaborate the graphs and frequency tables, identifying scientific productivity and
collaboration. In addition, the VOSviewer tool was used to elaborate the network of co-
occurrences of authors and keywords.
Results
The search strategy used retrieved a total of 1,046 documents, where most of the
manuscripts are published through academic events (47.04%), followed by original
articles (41.59%), book chapters (6.12%), review (5.26%), which were published between
1993 and 2021 (2022 was not considered because it is not a current year), written mostly
in English (97.90%) (See Table 1).
Table 1.
Type of document
Type
Percentage
Conference Paper
44.46%
Article
41.59%
Book chapter
6.12%
Magazine
5.26%
Review of a conference
2.58%
Grand total
100.00%
Source:
Prepared from SCOPUS findings.
Likewise, Figure 1 shows the scientific production using Price's exponential model
(Price, 1963). (Price, 1963)revealing an exponential increase between 1993 and 2021,
with a goodness-of-fit index of R
2
=77% according to the second-order polynomial trend
line.
Figure 1.
Cumulative growth of scientific production, virtual reality and marketing.
Nube Estefania Venegas Sanchez, Diego Vinicio Orellana Bueno, Pablo Javier Perez Jara, Maria Del Pilar Cabrera
Hermida *.
Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
53
Source:
Prepared from SCOPUS findings.
The bibliometric analysis identified a total of 112 sources that publish topics related to
virtual reality and marketing. Figure 2 shows the behavior of the 10 main sources. Being,
18.6% cataloged as "Book Series", 6.28% as "Conference Proceedings" and only 5.03%
belong to the typology of "Journals".
In the top three, with the highest number of papers, is the book series "Lecture Notes
In Computer Science" topping the list with 34 manuscripts, followed by "Developments
In Marketing Science Proceedings Of The Academy Of Marketing Science" and
"Journal Of Business Research" with 13 papers each.
In addition, the year with the highest number of publications was 2018, with 8 papers
published in "Lecture Notes in Computer Science". Four of the bibliographic sources
maintain an H index greater than 100. Most of the published articles belong to quartile
1 of the Scimago Journal Rank. The predominant subject matter in SCOPUS belongs to
"Computer Science", followed by the area of "Business, Management and Accounting"
and the category of "Marketing", which, allows evidencing the possible relationship
between the advancement of technology and marketing.
y = 6,7596e
0,091x
R² = 0,8102
y = 0,1179x
2
- 0,8511x + 14,047
R² = 0,7736
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
Analysis of the global scientific production on virtual reality as a marketing tool in Scopus
Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
54
Figure 2.
Top 10 scientific journals that address the subject of the study.
Source:
Prepared from SCOPUS findings.
Figure 3 shows that there are several publications dealing with virtual reality and
Marketing, recognizing its application in different fields of science, revealing that
"Computer Science", "Engineering", "Business, Management and Accounting",
"Social Sciences" and "Mathematics" concentrate the largest number of published
articles, where the sum of their production (76.52%) is above the average of 70
documents, which allows us to assume the possibility of using marketing and virtual
reality not only in the field of business, but also provides opportunities for its adoption
in the exact, social and health sciences.
Figure 3.
Areas of science that refer to virtual reality as a marketing tool.
Source:
Prepared from SCOPUS findings.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Journal of Business Research
Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science
Communications in Computer and Information Science
ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing
Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies
Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services
550
352
234
172
103
67
40
40
39
39
32
29
28
16
15
14
13
11
11
10
9
8
7
2
2
1
0 100 200 300 400 500 600
Informática
Negocios, Gestión y Contabilidad
Matemáticas
Economía, Econometría y Finanzas
Medicina
Física y Astronomía
Artes y Humanidades
Energía
Ciencias Agrícolas y Biológicas
Neurociencia
Profesiones de la Salud
Química
Enfermería
Nube Estefania Venegas Sanchez, Diego Vinicio Orellana Bueno, Pablo Javier Perez Jara, Maria Del Pilar Cabrera
Hermida *.
Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
55
On the other hand, through VosViewer, the network of researchers is constructed in
order to analyze the co-authorship links, for this, the type of analysis is configured as
"Co-Authorship", the authors as the unit of analysis, the counting method will be
complete, the minimum number of documents per author will be 3, so that, of 2471
authors only 80 meet the proposed requirements, which are grouped into 38 clusters
linked by 74 lines of linkage (See Figure 4).
Figure 4.
Cluster network of authors involved in research on Virtual Reality and
Marketing.
Source:
Prepared from co-authorship analysis using VOSviewer.
However, some of the 80 elements of the identified author network are not connected
to each other, where, the largest set of items is formed by 7 authors divided into 2
clusters with 15 links. In the first cluster we find K. Gao, M. D. Wiederhold, B. K.
Wiederhold, C. Boyd, in the second cluster are G. Riva, A. Gagglioli and C. Sulea (see
Figure 5).
Analysis of the global scientific production on virtual reality as a marketing tool in Scopus
Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
56
Figure 5.
Cluster network of authors with the highest number of links to each other.
Source:
Prepared from co-authorship analysis using VOSviewer.
Now, key terms maintain links to each other, differentiating pairs of words that are
connected by a link, where the strength of the link is represented by a positive numerical
value (van Eck and Waltman, 2010) In this sense, Figure 6 shows the main keywords
associated with the subject of study, 12 clusters can be observed with 787 elements
represented by colored circles that group the relationships of the concepts to form the
network of co-occurrences with 34,815 links of strength. Being, "Virtual Reality" the
term with the highest number of occurrences, followed by "Marketing", "Commerce",
"Sales", "Electronic commerce" with 887, 474, 147 88 and 99 occurrences respectively.
Nube Estefania Venegas Sanchez, Diego Vinicio Orellana Bueno, Pablo Javier Perez Jara, Maria Del Pilar Cabrera
Hermida *.
Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
57
Figure 6.
Network of keyword co-occurrences
.
Source
: SCOPUS findings analysis using VOSviewer.
When reviewing the scientific literature to determine the different implications that
virtual reality has had on marketing, it is noted that, in 1993, marketing was already
considered an emerging technology with a high potential for simulation, where the
authors Coddington and Chapman (1993) in their study, detail the advantages of using
virtual reality for the marketing of new products in industrial environments, which will
allow future customers and business partners to test machinery safely in three-
dimensional environments. In this regard, Olsen (1993)recognizing the complex
competitive environment of today reveals the need to identify the relationship between
product concepts, technologies and the ability to convert them into high quality
products with competitive prices, under the integration of the organization's resources
and marketing systems.
In addition, marketing processes applied within tourism businesses can promote virtual
experiences that can function as substitutes for actual visits to locations with peculiar or
hazardous features (Guttentag, 2010)where interactive web-based interfaces can
present products, destinations in terms of marketing elements, and other marketing
elements (Dahan and Hauser, 2010). (Dahan and Hauser, 2002).
Therefore, the use of virtual reality as a tool is growing rapidly (Redlinger and Shao,
2021). (Redlinger and Shao, 2021)In the automotive area, for example, virtual reality as
a marketing tool must solve challenges and opportunities such as cost, location for
customers, flexibility of interactions, transportation model, depth perception, haptic
perception, motion, motion perception/physical collision, color and texture, sound
feedback, product interaction/manipulation, visual-spatial, graphic quality,
Analysis of the global scientific production on virtual reality as a marketing tool in Scopus
Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 7, No. 45
March – July 2023. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 50-61
58
intuitiveness, cybersecurity and cyber-disease. (Henriques and Winkler, 2021)Also,
marketing is a key tool in analyzing the behavior of people who use virtual stores
(Krasonikolakis, 2021). (Krasonikolakis et al., 2021).
Conclusions
The findings determine that between 1993 and 2021 there is a total of 1046 articles that
address virtual reality as a marketing tool, showing a sustained increase in its scientific
production, demonstrating the interest in its study in recent decades.
In addition, a total of 2,471 authors were identified, divided into 84 groups and only 7
of them have published documents in common. Furthermore, there are 112 sources
that publish topics related to virtual reality and marketing, revealing that most of the
publications do not belong to the category of articles; they are concentrated in
documents published through academic/scientific events and are framed in the areas
of computer science, engineering, business, administration and accounting.
On the other hand, it is revealed that the adoption of Virtual Reality as a tool that can
be used within marketing processes is currently booming, being an essential element
for automation in market research.
..........................................................................................................
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