A Bibliometric Analysis of Human Hormones in Consumer Neuroscience and Human Behavior Research: Trends and Insights With Implications for Marketing

Abstract

The fields of consumer neuroscience, neuromarketing, human behaviour, and human hormones (such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins) have been widely studied. However, it is noteworthy that despite the considerable attention directed towards these domains, the phenomenon of happiness hormones in the field of marketing and consumer behaviour remains largely unexplored within academic investigations. To fill this gap, this study conducted a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of scientific articles published on this combination (neuro*marketing OR marketing OR consumer*neuroscience OR human AND behavi*) AND (dopamine OR serotonin OR oxytocin OR endorphins OR happy AND hormo*). The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) system and VOSviewer software were used to select and analyse articles published in the Scopus database between January 2012 and December 2022. The analysis included 218 articles from various subject areas, including neuroscience, psychology, multidisciplinary studies, art and humanities, and social sciences. The results show an increasing number of publications over the years, with the United States being the leading country in terms of publication output, with 116 articles and 5920 citations. Influential authors, such as Jacob S., were identified, along with highly cited articles and keywords related to human behaviour and hormones, including "dopamine", "serotonin", "testosterone", "oxytocin", "depression", "stress", "motivation", "behaviour" and "anxiety". PLoS One was identified as the most productive journal (20 articles and 372 citations). This is the first study to provide a bibliometric analysis of the current state of research in consumer neuroscience, neuromarketing, human behaviour and human hormones, and to suggest directions for future research in the field.