The effect of Big Data adoption on companies’ selection of the target market

With the advent of the so-called Industry 4.0 paradigm, an increasing number of firms worldwide have adopted new Digital Technologies, including Big Data, which, as shown by a burgeoning strand of literature, have relevant implications for firms’ performance and strategic choices. In this study, we assess the role played by the adoption of Big Data and related technologies on the firm’s probability of serving a niche market rather than a mass market. To this purpose, we resort to a unique survey administered at the end of 2019 to a sample of more than 6,000 Italian firms operating in various sectors. We show that the development and use of Big Data and related advanced technologies have a significant positive impact on the probability of firms to “go niche”. Additionally, we find evidence that this probability is influenced by both the prevailing production type and the firm’s position in its value chain.