Consumer Empowerment: A Hybrid Review and Future Research Directions

Abstract

Consumer empowerment (CEM) in the marketplace reflects the extent to which consumers can exercise informed control over their choices, interactions, and outcomes. In today's rapidly evolving, digitally enabled consumption landscape, these empowerment opportunities have expanded across physical, digital, and phygital environments. Despite substantial research over the past few decades, CEM findings remain scattered, underscoring the need for a comprehensive synthesis. This study conducted a hybrid review of 324 Scopus‐indexed (Q1 and Q2) articles on consumer empowerment from 2000 to 2025, following the PRISMA protocol. Employing bibliometric techniques (keyword co‐occurrence, cartographic mapping, and co‐citation analysis) alongside the ADO‐TCM framework, the study synthesizes existing findings into a consolidated conceptual map that illustrates the interconnected nature of CEM, its effects, and their micro‐ and macro‐level outcomes. The integrative model is therefore a structured visual synthesis of prior work, rather than a new standalone theory and is strictly derived from the ADO–TCM‐based coding of the included studies. Findings reveal that consumer empowerment influences firm performance both directly and indirectly. At the micro‐level, while CEM influences employee job (dis)satisfaction, commitment, firm's financial performance, firm recognition, and brand love/hate. At the macro‐level, CEM influences firm sustainability, boycotts, activism, anti‐consumption and evangelism. Based on the thematic insights, the study offered future research directions for CEM research focusing on information overload, consumer education, anti‐consumption and well‐being, phygital experience, sustainability, and interactivity as potent areas. Theoretical and methodological directions are also offered to advance CEM research further.