This review used bibliometric techniques to map scholarship on impulse buying and live streaming across 98 Web of Science documents published from 2020–2025. Bibliographic coupling and keyword co-occurrence indicated a shift from conventional impulse-buying theory toward live-commerce-specific variables: streamer attributes, real-time interaction, scarcity manipulation, and social-influence processes. The map identifies major themes, seminal publications, and emerging trends, but it neither pools effect sizes nor appraises the causal quality of each underlying study.
Key findings
- The dataset comprised 98 Web of Science documents from the six-year period 2020–2025, reflecting a young and rapidly changing field.
- Research attention shifted from conventional impulse-buying theory toward streamer attributes, real-time interaction, scarcity manipulation, and social-influence processes specific to live streaming.
- The analysis maps themes, influential publications, and emerging trends for research and marketing agendas, but it does not estimate which factor produces the largest real-world increase in purchases.
Why this matters globally
The map can help researchers prioritize gaps and help firms understand how live commerce differs from static e-commerce. Its emphasis on scarcity and social pressure also raises questions about transparency, consumer protection, and designs that avoid exploiting vulnerability. Marketing implications should be tested with experiments or observed behaviour before being presented as effective interventions.
Thai researcher contribution
Muhammad Ashraf Fauzi, Walton Wider, and Lester Naces Udang listed the School of Liberal Arts at Shinawatra University in Pathum Thani; Fauzi and Wider also held Malaysian affiliations. This is Thai–Malaysian collaboration on digital consumer research, but the bibliographic corpus is international and does not specifically study Thai consumers.
Limitations to consider
Restriction to Web of Science and 2020–2025 can omit Scopus-only records, specialist databases, non-English work, grey literature, and newly published items not yet indexed. Bibliographic coupling and keyword maps depend on search terms, terminology, and citation lag. Network prominence does not appraise study quality, pool effect sizes, or distinguish causal evidence from association. These are methodological scope limits, not evidence that absent topics are unimportant.