Data Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: A Longitudinal Study on the Delivery of Marketing Intelligence to Small Businesses: An Abstract

Typically, only larger businesses have been able to purchase Marketing Intelligence (MO), whilst small businesses have been unable to access and deploy data due to prohibitive costs and resource deficiencies. Despite these challenges faced by small businesses, research suggests that MI has a positive influence on the market orientation (MO) of small firms as it facilitates flexible market planning (Pelham and Wilson 1996; Donnelly et al. 2013). This paper questions what happens to the MO of small businesses when MI is provided, withdrawn and reinstated over a longitudinal period of ten years. The MI at the centre of this paper is Dunnhumby data, also known as Tesco clubcard data. The ‘Dunnhumby Project Northern Ireland’ commenced in 2008 and acknowledged the lack of information flow and financial barriers constraining small agri-food businesses. The project ran for a 3-year period and intensively engaged 7 case firms. Despite firms acclimatizing to the continued exposure of MI over the 3-year period, the project ended, resulting in the automatic withdrawal of free data and interpretation support to all case firms in September 2011. In 2016, the researchers revisited the 7 case firms to explore the impact of this MI withdrawal. In the same year, however, funding was secured to reinstate the project and facilitate free access to MI for small agri-food businesses over the following 3 years. The researchers returned to the case firms in 2019 to investigate developments in the firms during this period of data provision. Overall, this study seeks to provide longitudinal insights into the 3 phases of this research, exploring whether these firms return to their old ways of marketing following MI withdrawal, or whether original exposure instils a market-oriented cultural change. The importance of free data and analytical support is evident, as at least 4 out of the 7 firms did largely revert back to their ‘old’ ways of marketing. The need for a sustainable delivery of MI is a necessity and must be facilitated in a format that is understandable to ensure that small businesses continue to derive long-term benefits, in a consistent and strategic manner.