Successfully Implementing Big Data Analytics in Marketing
(A2019-8444)

AUTHORS

Devon Johnson, Montclair State University; Debika Sihi, Southwestern University; Laurent Muzellec, Trinity College Dublin

KEYWORDS

analytics; implementation ; marketing

ABSTRACT

This study examines the experience of marketing departments to become fully data-driven decision-making organization. We draw in the Information technology literature to argue that marketing departments have been engaging in sensemaking to understand the emerging organizing vision of marketing related big data analytics. We observe that big data sensemaking is initiated by top management and is comprised of four primary activities, namely external knowledge acquisition, improving digitized data quality, big data analytics experimentation and big data analytics information dissemination. We evaluate this organic approach of departmental sensemaking and an administered approach by which top management introduce analytics skilled employees. Using survey data from 298 marketing and analytics middle management professionals with USA firms, we find that although both paths lead to increased data-driven marketing, the organic approach is superior in generating marking insights.