A bibliometric analysis of virtual influencers in the Web of Science

Abstract

Abstract The role of virtual influencers has risen in popularity. However, the revisions on this are scarce and incomplete. In this framework, two main objectives guide this work: (i) to carry on a performance analysis to measure the visibility/impact of the scientific production on virtual influencers’ marketing (most cited authors, journals, and themes) and (ii) to visually present the scientific structure by topics of research in virtual influencers marketing as well as its evolution along time. A final set of 1740 papers about virtual influencer marketing was retrieved from the ISIWeb of Science (from 1997 to 2021). Three different periods of time were identified (i) from 1997 to 2012 (649 papers), (ii) from 2013 to 2016 (540 papers), and (iii) from 2017 to 2021 (514 papers). Our results have identified seven promising future research lines on this topic, highlighting the role of tourism and sports celebrities.