Analytics Literature Review: Critical Analysis on the State-of-the-Art on Research of Analytics as a Source of Competitive Advantage

Abstract

To provide a literature review on the role of Analytics in obtaining competitive advantages, by presenting main studies, identifying main themes, methods and research pathways and bringing a critical view of research on the subject. There are literature reviews with different focuses around Analytics, such as the study by Trieu (2017) which addresses the perspective of Business Intelligence. This study considers all recent literature reviews and their different focuses and critiques existing conceptual approaches and methods. This is a literature review based on Wolfswynkel (2013), based on five steps: 1) Scope definition; 2) Definition of keywords and search in databases; 3) Selection of the final set of studies considered; 4) Topic coding and analysis; 5) Presentation of results i) The main avenue of research is to understand the intermediary role between Analytics and obtaining value, through Modeling through Structured Equations; ii) Specific competences are necessary to obtain value from Analytics; 3) Difficulty in demonstrating value from Analytics persists Identifying state-of-the-art research on Analytics as a source of competitive advantage, listing and critiquing the main avenues of research and current results and presenting opportunities for future academic development The article contributes to management as it brings a new starting point for identifying in which organizational contexts Analytics methods really contribute to obtaining competitive advantage (e.g.: Organizational structure, sector, country, size , growth stage, etc.