The Impact of Big Data and Firms’ Data Capabilities: sector comparison by RIETI survey data

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of big data on the business performances of Japanese companies by using the dataset of the questionnaire surveys conducted by RIETI in 2017 and 2020. There are three key findings.

First, the companies that benefit from big data have not been significantly increasing. But the majority of the companies expect to expand their data use in the future. The fact indicates that the base of data utilization in Japan is growing with expectation.

Second, measuring companies' data capability by data analytics competency (DAC) scores, we found the difference between manufacturing and service sectors. The DAC's effect in the service sector is statistically positive, whereas that in the manufacturing sector is not. This suggests that the benefit of data utilization is much evident in the service sector than that in the manufacturing sector.

Third, by plotting the DAC scores of each sector on the data capability map, we found out the similarity and superiority among sectors. From the map, financial and information sectors have similar data competencies and relatively superior to other sectors in the light of data utilization.

This study gives a good starting point for future research on sector comparison of the impact of big data and firms' capacity of data utilization.