Pathways from Data to Value: Identifying Strategic Archetypes of Analytics-Based Services

The digital transformation offers organizations new opportunities to expand their existing service portfolio in order to achieve competitive advantages. A popular way to create new customer value is the offer of analyticsbased services (ABS) – services that apply analytical methods to data to empower customers to make better decisions and to solve complex problems. However, research still lacks to provide a profound conceptualization of this novel service type. Similarly, actionable insights on how to purposefully establish ABS in the market to enrich the service portfolio remain scarce. Our cluster analysis of 105 ABS offered by start-ups identifies four generic ABS archetypes and unveils their specific service objectives and pronounced characteristics. The findings contribute to a more profound theorizing process on ABS by providing a detailed characterization of different ABS types and a systematization regarding strategic opportunities to enrich service portfolios in practice.