The Power of Search. Search Engines as Key Marketing Parameters: A Systematic Literature Review

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,7, University of Mannheim, language: English, abstract: This paper examines the academic research that has been published during the past 20 years concerning search engine marketing. It classifies the most prominent papers and establishes a conceptual framework consisting of three broad areas and 20 different research themes. This is the first literature review of search-engine-related research, proposing a comprehensive conceptual framework. The purpose of this study is to conceptualize past research on search engines, develop a framework of topic areas and their relationships among each other, and identify research gaps and questions for future research. The literature review covers all academic research papers from five acclaimed journals of the past 20 years that match predefined keywords and deal with search engines as parameters in modern-day marketing. This literature review of search engine research is the first of its kind, creating a framework of research fields exclusively for online search. Furthermore, it presents the related academic work in an interdependent structure of topics and suggests future research fields.