A Bibliometric Analysis of Tribalism: A 20-Year Evaluation

Abstract This study is aimed to quantitatively classify the publications about the concept of tribalism and to reveal the reflections of the relevant concept in the literature. A systematic literature review was conducted with bibliometric analysis. The study examined 334 articles published between 2003 and 2023 that used the terms "tribalism", "tribal", or "tribes." The articles were exported from Web of Science database in November 2023. The data set of the study was analyzed using the Bibliometix package in the R Studio program. In this context, content analysis and citation network analysis were performed on the data. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the number of articles published on tribalism has fluctuated over the years. Brand tribalism, culture and customer tribes are the most frequently used keywords along with tribalism. A diffraction occurred in 2016 and the words "community", "brand community", "consumer tribes" and "brand" came to the fore. In the last five years, tribalism, brand, brand tribalism and tribal marketing were the most trending topics. It was found that the most frequently cited articles regarding the concept of tribalism are mainly theoretical articles.