Exploring the Role of Storytelling in Expanding Market Reach of Digital MSMEs: A Bibliometric Analysis of Marketing Communication Research

Abstract

This study aims to map the development of research on storytelling in marketing communications related to the expansion of market reach for digital MSMEs. This study uses a bibliometric analysis approach to identify research trends, thematic structures, and relationships between topics in the relevant literature. Research data were obtained through data mining using Publish or Perish software from the Crossref database with three main keywords: "Storytelling Marketing", "Digital MSMEs", and "Market Reach", with each search yielding many publications and resulting in approximately 3,000 documents for analysis. The obtained bibliographic data were then analysed using VOSviewer software and a keyword co-occurrence approach to produce research network visualisations, trend analysis, and topic density analysis. The results show that the literature on storytelling in digital marketing forms three main research clusters: storytelling and brand communication, digital marketing and community activities, and the digital transformation of MSMEs. The trend analysis indicates that storytelling research is evolving from a focus on narrative communication and consumer experience to integration with digital marketing and the digital transformation of MSMEs. Topic density analysis shows that keywords such as marketing, storytelling, micro, digital transformation, and performance are the most dominant research themes in the analysed literature. This study provides an overview of the knowledge structure and development of storytelling research in the context of digital marketing and demonstrates the relationship between storytelling, digital marketing, and the digital transformation of MSMEs in the academic literature.