Value creation from analytics with limited data: a case study on the retailing of durable consumer goods

ABSTRACT Companies are pinning high hopes on competitive advantages through data analytics. So far, value gains through analytics have been demonstrated for IT-heavy and data-rich business areas. Yet, research has paid little attention to value creation through data analytics in the plethora of companies with limited data (i.e. having transactions in the hundreds and attributes in the tens). Building on the literature of big data value creation and the resource-based view, we carried out an in-depth analytics case study with a retailer of renewable energy systems. Firms in this business area operate with expensive but few sales, so their available data are notoriously limited. Our findings demonstrate that data analytics capabilities and value creation mechanisms (democratise, contextualise, experiment with data, and execute data insights) are also effective in situations with limited data. Practice and research should therefore put not only emphasis on the volume and the variety of data but also on contextual factors related to managers (e.g. clear strategy, vision, leadership) and all employees (e.g. openness for agile working mode, data awareness).