Service firms using AI-powered data analytics performed better, a meta-analysis finds

The study looked at performance types including sales, marketing, innovation, organizational, financial and operational results. This matters because big data analytics has touched nearly every service industry over the last decade, and AI has added a new trend to how firms use it.

The analysis also identified what drives firms to adopt analytics in the first place. Environmental dynamism, resources and capabilities, and competitive pressure all pushed adoption, with environmental dynamism having the largest effect, followed by resources and capabilities.

The authors conducted a meta-analysis to identify the relevant dimensions of big data analytics and to evaluate AI as a potential moderator of its effects on service performance. They framed it as a systematic review of empirical results, needed to understand the different performance types better.

On adoption, the results show that environmental dynamism, resources and capabilities, and competitive pressure drive the use of big data analytics. Environmental dynamism, followed by resources and capabilities, has greater effects on adoption.

On performance, the findings suggest that AI-powered analytics enhances service performance more than analytics adopted without AI. The record reports this as a comparison across the pooled studies.