In an era where digital landscapes redefine consumer interaction and marketing paradigms, Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) research has surged as a critical domain, unifying diverse marketing channels and technologies into cohesive strategies. A pioneering bibliometric study recently published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications embarks on a meticulous mapping of IMC’s intellectual terrain from 2015 to 2024, revealing the field’s dynamic evolution and highlighting its intellectual underpinnings. This comprehensive analysis uncovers how IMC scholarship has expanded its thematic focus, emphasizing digital transformation, business performance optimization, and consumer engagement strategies, thereby reshaping marketing science and practice.
The study employs advanced bibliometric methodologies to quantify and contextualize the growth of IMC research. By systematically analyzing citation networks, publication trends, and co-authorship patterns, the researchers illuminate the scholarly ecosystems that drive conceptual advances and practical innovations. This methodological rigor not only affirms the scholarly community’s expanding engagement with IMC but also identifies core contributors—leading authors, influential journals, and country-level research hubs—that serve as intellectual anchors within the discipline. The resultant knowledge structures function as a blueprint for understanding the historical progression of IMC themes and predicting future research trajectories.
One of the study’s most striking findings is the identification of three principal thematic clusters that have dominated IMC research over the past decade. The first centers on digital transformation’s role within IMC frameworks, investigating how emerging technologies reshape communication channels, consumer touchpoints, and data analytics integration. Researchers within this cluster probe the implications of automation, big data, and AI-powered personalization, which collectively enable marketers to tailor messages with unprecedented precision and scale. The digital pivot reflects broader technological trends while elevating IMC’s strategic relevance in a hyper-connected world.
The second thematic cluster explores the nexus between IMC and business performance. Here, scholarship rigorously examines how integrated communication strategies contribute to financial metrics, brand equity, and organizational agility. By synthesizing empirical evidence, researchers chart pathways showing how synchronized messaging and channel cohesion enhance customer lifetime value, market responsiveness, and competitive advantage. This strand of research underscores IMC’s instrumental role in bridging marketing theory and operational execution, providing evidence-based guidelines for resource allocation and strategic planning.
Parallel to these, the third cluster focuses on consumer engagement, elucidating psychological, behavioral, and emotional dimensions that IMC strategies activate. Investigations within this area examine how integrated messages influence consumer perceptions, loyalty, and advocacy in an increasingly fragmented media environment. By combining social science theories with marketing analytics, scholars offer nuanced insights into audience segmentation, message resonance, and interaction timing, thereby enhancing the precision and impact of marketing campaigns. This consumer-centric focus amplifies IMC’s value proposition amid rising demands for authenticity and relational marketing.
While the study showcases a positive trajectory in IMC’s scientific and practical contributions, it presents a candid appraisal of existing limitations that temper current insights. A key constraint emerges from its exclusive reliance on the Scopus database, which, although comprehensive, may omit seminal research indexed elsewhere. The authors advocate for multi-database syntheses in future inquiries to capture a truly global and interdisciplinary knowledge base. Such an approach would mitigate indexing biases and augment the representativeness of bibliometric findings, fostering a more holistic appraisal of the intellectual landscape.
Furthermore, the study emphasizes the potential enrichment that qualitative analytic tools could bring to IMC scholarship. Despite the robust quantitative foundation, integrating software such as NVivo or SciMAT could unlock latent themes and content-driven insights obscured by purely numerical analyses. Qualitative content analysis, thematic development, and epistemological assessments promise to deepen understanding of conceptual evolution beyond mere citation counts, enabling scholars to unravel complex narrative threads and interpretive frameworks within IMC’s corpus.
Another pivotal recommendation targets the linguistic scope of research inclusion. The predominantly English-language orientation of current bibliometric analysis risks marginalizing research contributions published in other languages. By engaging multilingual research teams and leveraging cutting-edge translation technologies, future studies can bridge this gap, democratizing knowledge exchange and amplifying diverse perspectives. Such inclusivity is particularly vital given IMC’s inherently global and culturally contingent nature, where localized strategies often inform broader theoretical constructs.
From a broader theoretical standpoint, this study situates IMC within a rapidly transforming marketing ecosystem characterized by digital innovation and data-centric decision-making. The research clusters identified not only mirror evolving practitioner needs but also underscore emerging research frontiers, such as AI integration, consumer data ethics, and omni-channel consistency. These evolving focal areas herald a paradigm shift, where IMC research must reconcile technological advances with foundational marketing principles, demanding methodological pluralism and conceptual agility.
The meticulous intellectual cartography produced also serves as an invaluable resource for both scholars and practitioners. For academics, it clarifies productive research niches and identifies thought leaders whose work defines the field’s trajectory. For marketers, the integrated themes offer actionable insights into deploying cohesive strategies that harness technological tools while engaging consumers authentically. The strategic pathways the study suggests—extending current clusters, addressing gaps, and overcoming methodological limitations—present a balanced roadmap for IMC’s next evolutionary phase.
As academia increasingly embraces interdisciplinary approaches, the study implicitly calls for collaboration across marketing, information systems, psychology, and data science to bolster IMC theory and practice. The challenges and opportunities highlighted demand sophisticated analytical techniques, cross-sector expertise, and contextual sensitivity to navigate complexities inherent in digitally mediated communications. This multi-dimensional engagement promises to elevate IMC research beyond descriptive mapping into predictive and prescriptive domains.
Moreover, the differential impact of IMC strategies across cultural and regional contexts emerges as an underexplored avenue with profound implications. Integrated marketing messages resonate variably depending on socio-cultural norms, media consumption patterns, and regulatory frameworks. Future bibliometric and qualitative studies that integrate geo-cultural analytics could unveil region-specific dynamics and foster tailored communication frameworks, enhancing marketing efficacy on an international scale.
The review’s explicit identification of methodological and conceptual constraints also invites reflection on academic publishing norms within IMC. The predominance of quantitative bibliometric techniques may inadvertently deepen certain epistemological biases, privileging measurable outputs over interpretive richness. Embracing diversified methodological repertoires, including ethnographic and longitudinal designs, could reconcile these biases, rendering IMC research more adaptable and reflective of real-world complexities.
Intriguingly, the study situates IMC as an interdisciplinary bridge not only across marketing subfields but also linking theory with practice via technology adoption. This dual role situates IMC research at a strategic junction essential for navigating contemporary marketing’s fluidity. It underscores the necessity for academics to engage with technologically informed frameworks while remaining grounded in consumer psychology and brand management principles.
In practical terms, the evolving knowledge structures mapped provide practitioners with a synthesized lexicon and conceptual toolkit to drive integrated campaigns in increasingly complex media ecosystems. The highlighted strategic pathways function as a kind of innovation playbook, inspiring marketers to experiment with AI-driven content personalization, optimize omni-channel synchronization, and harness real-time analytics to refine consumer engagement. These insights translate academic rigor into tangible competitive advantages.
As marketing environments become more fragmented and consumer journeys increasingly non-linear, the centrality of integrated communication frameworks articulated by this research assumes even greater significance. Understanding how digital transformation intersects with performance outcomes and engagement mechanics equips industry professionals to design agile, responsive marketing architectures that deliver measurable impact amid intensifying competition and shifting consumer expectations.
Ultimately, this bibliometric analysis is more than an academic inventory; it is a visionary lens capturing IMC’s metamorphosis amid technological disruption and consumer empowerment. By clarifying thematic trajectories, exposing research lacunae, and proposing future directions, it galvanizes a vibrant research community to innovate, collaborate, and expand the horizons of integrated marketing communications in the digital age. This evolving scholarship offers profound implications for how brands engage markets, how researchers interrogate marketing systems, and how the discipline adapts to emergent realities.
The study stands as a testament to the power of bibliometric science not only to document knowledge but to inspire intellectual renewal and strategic foresight within a field critical to contemporary business. It sets the stage for a new chapter in IMC research—one enriched by methodological diversity, inclusive scholarship, and forward-looking inquiry that collectively redefine the boundaries and potentials of marketing communication in an interconnected world.
Subject of Research:
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) research trends, knowledge structures, and thematic evolution from 2015 to 2024.
Article Title:
Bibliometric analysis of Integrated Marketing Communications (2015–2024): knowledge structures, emerging themes, and future perspectives.
Article References:
Qi, M., Abdullah, Z., Zhou, B. et al. Bibliometric analysis of Integrated Marketing Communications (2015–2024): knowledge structures, emerging themes, and future perspectives. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1622 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05884-8
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