Abstract

Purpose: As one of the continuous studies on the offline distribution industry, the purpose of this study is to find ways for offline stores to respond to the growth of online shopping by identifying research trends on department stores. Research design, data and methodology: To this end, this study conducted word frequency analysis, word co-occurrence frequency analysis, BERTopic, LDA, and dynamic topic modeling using Python 3.7 on a total of 551 English abstracts searched with the keyword 'department store' in scienceON as of October 10, 2022. Results: The results of word frequency analysis and co-occurrence frequency analysis revealed that research related to department stores frequently focuses on factors such as customers, consumers, products, satisfaction, services, and quality. BERTopic and LDA analyses identified five topics, including 'store image,' with 'shopping information' showing relatively high interest, while 'sales systems' were observed to have relatively lower interest. Conclusions: Based on the results of this study, it was concluded that research related to department stores has so far been conducted in a limited scope, and it is insufficient to provide clues for department stores to secure competitiveness against online platforms. Therefore, it is suggested that additional research be conducted on topics such as the true role of department stores in the retail industry, consumer reinterpretation, customer value and lifetime value, department stores as future retail spaces, ethical management, and transparent ESG management.