Unravelling the intellectual discourse of implicit consumer cognition: A bibliometric review

Consumer judgement, decision-making, and behavior largely rest on mental processes that reside outside of conscious awareness. Indirect measures and accompanying theoretical developments contributed to a better understanding of unconscious processes and produced a thriving stream of literature. More or less interrelated schools of thought emerged, yet the knowledge of the research field lacks full integration. This study aims to unveil the hidden structure of the discourse, condense knowledge, and stimulate further research. To this end, 446 research articles with 16,684 unique references serve as a database. A factor analysis on the co-citation patterns of the top 156 articles identified seven research streams. Social network analysis revealed intellectual connections within and between research streams. The temporal development of research streams shows that the main focus shifted from implicit memory to implicit attitude research after the emergence of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Implicit theories, although relevant, are isolated from the rest of the research field. This gap holds potential for further knowledge integration.