Two decades of customers as good soldiers: mapping the scientific evolution of customer citizenship behavior

Purpose This study aims to provide a Scopus-based bibliometric mapping review of customer citizenship behavior (CCB) research to map the field’s intellectual foundations, identify thematic clusters and delineate emerging research fronts. Design/methodology/approach This study used performance analysis and science mapping to analyze 258 articles retrieved from Scopus, spanning 2005–2024. Findings The results indicate that China, Gong T and North-West University are leading countries, authors and universities publishing studies on CCB. Co-citation analysis identifies three key thematic areas: antecedents, foundation variables and mechanisms of CCB. Additionally, bibliometric coupling reveals six thematic clusters: determinants of customer citizenship behavior, value co-creation, corporate social responsibility impact, customer-customer interactions, corporate resources and brand love and experience. The study concludes with six research fronts and directions for future studies. This study offers marketing scholars and practitioners a structured understanding of how customers contribute to organizational success through citizenship behavior. Originality/value This study makes a novel contribution by producing the first integrated bibliometric map of the CCB field that simultaneously reveals its historical foundations, structural intellectual architecture and emerging research trajectories. The novelty lies not in the bibliometric techniques but in the structural and evolutionary insights their integrated application to CCB yields: specifically, that CCB scholarship rests on three largely disconnected theoretical conversations and is generating six identifiable emerging research fronts, a structural map no prior review of the field has produced.