Systematic Literature Review on Remanufacturing Trade Based on Bibliometric Analysis

With the extensive development of remanufacturing, remanufacturing trade, as an essential part of it, has also attracted much attention from researchers. Quite a large number of studies related to remanufacturing trade, such as pricing, sales, competition, channel expansion and service strategy, have been published in various journals. This paper aims to focus on the research status on remanufacturing trade through bibliometric analysis that can provide the primary research trends and the future research hotspots by analyzing the progress, parties and themes of the research. In this paper, the review and analysis are conducted on over 121 articles from 2000 until July 2021 with the help of VOS viewer (Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands) and Citespace (Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA). The results of the analysis of research progress and research parties suggest that: (a) more and more researchers have started to pay attention to consumers during modeling; (b) sustainable/green aspects are frequently taken into account as a factor, but the sustainable/green standards for remanufacturing trade need to be further developed; (c) studies on remanufacturing trade are more abundant in heavy industry countries. Additionally, the hotspots for future research are identified via the theme analysis, including: (1) with the issuing of various government policies, the impact of these policies on decisions related to remanufacturing trade has been studied gradually and is expected to become a hot topic in the future; (2) a large number of papers conduct research on the basis of the supply chain of remanufactured products; (3) research on the online distribution channel has already been carried out and is constantly deepening; (4) the digital technology is increasingly introduced to remanufacturing trade in recent years.