What Do #Storytelling and #Marketing Have in Common? A Comprehensive Literature Review from the Web of Science

Storytelling is a powerful marketing tool that can be used to attract the audience's attention and influence behavior. However, this investigation seeks to understand more deeply the importance of written narratives in the marketing field. In this sense, the objective of this article is to explore similarities and identify patterns, phases or stages, variables, indicators, and respective relationships (models) to help marketers to create storytelling. In the analogy of the visual methodology analytical process, this literature review created a selection of the sample and developed content to structure storytelling within the marketing framework. Through the analysis of 78 papers published in the Web of Science main collection, this research finds out three clusters: marketing cluster, content cluster, and context cluster. Our results indicate that, in marketing, storytelling elicits brand identification, awareness, and customer engagement, as well as it helps with self-expression, a sense of belonging, and a perception of the value of the product or brand. We find some variables, indicators, and respective relationships (models) that can be used in storytelling in the marketing field to improve value awareness. This review also allowed us to identify factors related to the structuring of marketing storytelling. And we found three key elements of the story construct that are transversal: content, classification, and character.