Identifying emerging research fields: A longitudinal latent semantic keyword analysis

This study aims to gain insights into emerging research fields in the area of marketing and tourism. It provides support for the use of quantitative techniques to facilitate content analysis. The authors present a longitudinal latent semantic analysis of keywords. The proposed method is illustrated by two different examples: a scholarly journal (International Marketing Review) and conference proceedings (ENTER eTourism Conference). The methodology reveals an understanding of the current state of the art of marketing research and e-tourism by identifying neglected, popular or upcoming thematic research foci. The outcomes are compared with former results generated by traditional content analysis techniques. Findings confirm that the proposed methodology has the potential to complement qualitative content analysis, as the semantic analysis produces similar outcomes to qualitative content analysis to some extent. This paper reviews a journal’s content over a period of nearly three decades. The authors argue that the suggested methodology facilitates the analysis dramatically and can thus be simply applied on a regular basis in order to monitor topic development within a specific research domain.