Knowledge structures in service recovery: a bibliometric analysis

Service recovery research has evolved into an extensive, diversified body of knowledge in its fourth decade of investigation. Despite the growth of the field, the fundamental formation of the literature which serves as the basis for future research directions has not received adequate attention. This study investigates the knowledge structure underlying the service recovery literature applying multivariate bibliometric methods: exploratory factor analysis (EFA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and multidimensional scaling (MDS). We use these techniques to explore the developments of theoretical themes and research streams in the literature over past 40 years. The bibliometric results drawn from our analysis provides a holistic outline of the literature and offer guidelines for future research in service recovery.