Marketing Strategies and Tactics in the Metaverse: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

Marketing has traversed a long path from traditional to digital marketing to metaverse marketing in Industry 4.0. Different marketing scholars and academicians have predicted that the rules of marketing game are going to take a paradigm shift in the era of metaverse marketing. Hence, the primary objective of this literature review is to understand the application of metaverse in marketing or how marketing strategies and tactics can take place in the metaverse. In order to do this review research, 68 research articles have been identified from two prominent databases: Google Scholar and Scopus. Widely used PRISMA protocol has been used for this research paper identification. After selecting and downloading the papers, authors have manually reviewed each. Finally, the application of marketing strategies and tactics suggested by different researchers identified and recorded with Microsoft Excel and then analyzed with an advanced data visualization software called RAWGraph. The findings indicate that marketing strategies and tactics in the metaverse can be categorized into six (6) major categories. These are (1) segmentation, targeting, and positioning, (2) 4Ps, (3) branding, (4) customer relationship marketing and partner relationship marketing, (5) competitive strategies, and (6) marketing metrics and automation. The contributions of this study are as follows: (a) it developed a timeline map demonstrating the evolution of marketing technology over time and (b) it synthesized existing literature and presented how marketing strategies and tactics can be applied in the metaverse or immersive world.

Received: 17 March 2025 | Revised: 4 July 2025 | Accepted: 19 August 2025

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support this work are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Author Contribution Statement

Mohammad Faruk: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, and Project administration. Sagor Ejarder: Software, Formal analysis, Resources, Writing – original draft, and Visualization. Rabeya Jannat: Formal analysis, Resources, and Writing – original draft. Md. Imran Hossain: Software, Resources, Writing – original draft, and Visualization. Md. Hafizur Rahman: Methodology, Resources, and Writing – review & editing. Md. Shahanur Islam: Resources, Writing – review & editing, and Visualization.