Data Assets and Firm Markups:

Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, corporate markup, that is, the level of price against marginal cost, has continued to rise in Europe and the United States. On the other hand, the markup of Japanese companies does not show a noticeable increase. A characteristic of markup in Europe and the United States is that companies with particularly high markups are further increasing their markups and expanding their market shares. And as the source of such a tendency, it can be pointed out that there are companies that make effective use of data assets. It can be seen that the utilization of data assets makes it possible to differentiate from other companies, provide products and services that better suit the tastes of customers, enhance markup, and contribute to expanding market share. Data assets such as transaction data with customers will be accumulated, and utilization will bring about further increase in markups.

In this paper, based on the above awareness of the issues, while treating the data held by companies as one of the important input factors in corporate activities, we assess the impact of data assets such as customer information and transaction records on the profitability of Japanese companies.