LGBTQ-themed advertising: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

In the past five decades, researchers from a wide variety of disciplines such as marketing, psychology, sociology, and health have produced relevant documents on advertising targeting LGBTQ consumers. Nevertheless, it resulted in fragmented knowledge that creates a real challenge for researchers in tracing the evolution of the research focus. This focus has moved from the debate on how to present gay imagery to the comparison of mainstream and gay window ads, and later to the analysis of the effects of advertising targeting LGBTQ consumers, considering the gender of participants and actors. More recently, the research focused on the measure of attitudes toward advertising and homosexuality (Gong, 2019; Oakenfull et al., 2008; Puntoni et al., 2011) and processing advertising information (Bhat et al., 1998). We apply bibliometric analysis to enhance the understanding of advertising targeting LGBTQ consumers. We aim to uncover research trends by closely examining thematic clusters, assessing the maturity of the research topic, and suggesting potential directions for future studies.