BIG DATA RESOURCES, MARKETING CAPABILITIES, AND FIRM PERFORMANCE: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF CHOICE OF BUSINESS STRATEGY

If the resources that a firm possesses and exploits are critical in competitive settings, then what is being referred to as “big data” is surely one of the most important resources to be held up for scrutiny in decades.  No doubt big data resources include the ability to collect, sanitize, standardize, and analyze these data, but they also include the ability to utilize them in an effective manner and ahead of rivals.  Studies to date suggest that in spite of universal acknowledgement that these resources could be critical in a variety of mission-critical firm activities, they are currently under-deployed. Why is this the case? We argue that, because of the lack of prior, definitive theoretical/empirical studies, managers do not realize that the management of big data has a major influence on marketing capabilities and subsequently on firm performance. Using the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) as our primary theory base, we go on to theorize that business strategy (low cost or differentiating) has a moderating impact on these mainstream effects. Our approach was to find empirical evidence for this mediated-moderated relationship via a field study of 301 large firms across a wide variety of industries, capturing our constructs through previously-developed and new instrumentation.  Findings are generally supportive of our contentions, although the results of some moderation are counter-intuitive.  A discussion of the value of this work for theory building and for IT managers, marketing managers, and general managers concludes the paper.