Content analysis in SCM research: past uses and future research opportunities

Purpose Content analysis is a methodology that has been used in many academic disciplines as a means to extract quantitative measures from textual information. The purpose of this paper is to document the use of content analysis in the supply chain literature. The authors also discuss opportunities for future research. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct a literature review of 13 leading supply chain journals to assess the state of the content analysis-based literature and identify opportunities for future research. Additionally, the authors provide a general schema for and illustration of the use of content analysis. Findings The findings suggest that content analysis for quantitative studies and hypothesis testing purposes has rarely been used in the supply chain discipline. The research also suggests that in order to fully realize the potential of content analysis, future content analysis research should conduct more hypothesis testing, employ diverse data sets, utilize state-of-the-art content analysis software programs, and leverage multi-method research designs. Originality/value The current research synthesizes the use of content analysis methods in the supply chain domain and promotes the need to capitalize on the advantages offered by this research methodology. The paper also presents several topics for future research that can benefit from the content analysis method.