The Origins, Evolution, Current State, and Future of Green Products and Consumer Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Green products are crucial for a sustainable future. Without a strong understanding of consumer intent toward green products and research gaps, translating the availability of green products into actual consumer and market acceptance is hampered. This article reviews the available literature on green products and their relationship to consumers through bibliometric analysis. We used VosViewer to globalize the topic mapping and Scimat for longitudinal analysis. The results show that the available literature can be divided into four clusters, and five periods representing four distinct eras can be defined. Published studies were found in only 15 of the 36 calendar years constituting the first era. The second era started a wave of increasing green product research. In the third era, the number of journals with publications related to green products peaked. After the diversification of the third era, the fourth era saw the consolidation of the main vectors of publication. Despite a slow start in 1974, the research on eco-friendly products has expanded significantly over the past decade. Nonetheless, one persistent weakness of the literature is that most studies use customer intent, not the purchase itself, as the dependent variable. Consequently, there is still enormous potential for further research.