Research Trends of Service Export: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

Export is the first stage of internationalization for companies to enter new markets with the aim of marketing their products and services, promoting growth, and reducing risk. Service export, on the other hand, can be defined as the service provided by a resident company to individuals or companies residing abroad. Service exports have become increasingly important thanks to developments that will facilitate the physical distances to be exceeded, such as increased transportation facilities, the widespread of the Internet, and the fact that portable smart devices become more important in our daily life. Within the scope of this study, using the bibliometric analysis method, academic studies published on the Web of Science (WoS) database for 45 years, including 1975 and 2019 years, were analyzed and the thematic development of the service export topic was examined by scientific mapping. With this study, it is aimed to reveal the interest of service exports, which increase the popularity of businesses and promise a high value-added income, and to determine which themes and dynamics are explored with service export. The study also aims to provide awareness and perspective to researchers who want to carry out studies in this field. In the research conducted with the title constraint on Web of Science, 312 studies were determined, 92 of these studies were excluded because they were irrelevant to the subject, and examinations were made for the remaining 220 studies. Accordingly, the number of publications, citations, themes, research areas, the distribution of publications by years, the h-index, and the document type, institution, country data on this issue were examined. The paper shows that research interest in the service export theme has been growing in recent years, and mainly some topics such as developing countries, productivity, innovation, and human capital have emerged as the thematic areas in the field of service export.