Strategic Trends in the Airline Industry: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

Purpose – Airlines, affected by increasing competition, structural changes, technological developments and changes in customer needs and expectations, have had to develop new strategies over time. Therefore, airline strategies have garnered significant attention from a scientific perspective. However, there is no visualised bibliometric study that investigates the evolution of airline strategies in depth in the existing literature. The primary objective of this study is to identify strategic trends in the global airline industry and understand the evolution of these trends over time. Design/methodology/approach – This study presents a bibliometric analysis of research conducted on airline strategies in the Web of Science (WoS) database between 1991 and 2022. The analysis encompasses 471 studies collected from the Web of Science database. The publication trends in the literature on airline strategies, most cited articles, publishing journals, influential authors, collaborative authorship relationships, and a detailed evaluation based on keywords are provided. In this context, network and density maps have been generated using the VOSviewer program. Findings – The results indicate a notable increase in studies focused on airline strategies, particularly in the last few years. According to citation numbers, the study titled "Attention as the Mediator between Top Management Team Characteristics and Strategic Change: The Case of Airline Deregulation" stands out as one of the most influential articles. Based on the author citation analysis, Theresa Cho, Donald Hambrick, and James Liou are emphasized for their significant contributions to the literature on airline strategies. Discussion – The literature review reveals that strategic management is increasingly gaining significance in the aviation sector, and researchers' interest in this subject is growing. It is believed that this study will serve as a valuable resource for academics and practitioners interested in the literature on airline strategies, providing guidance for future research in the field.