Developing the Profiles of Business Analytics Adopters and Non-adopters Using Data Mining Tools

Despite the growing popularity of business analytics (BA) in the increasingly knowledge-based economy, many firms are still skeptical about its strategic value and thus hesitant to adopt BA. To have a true sense of which firms are likely to adopt and then utilize the BA for their competitiveness, this paper identifies BA user characteristics in terms of the user's firm size, organizational readiness, financial resources, and information technology expertise/infrastructure. In so doing, this paper conducted a series of cluster and decision tree analyses to develop specific profiles of BA adopters and non-adopters based on a sample of 224 Korean firms representing various industry sectors. This paper is one of the first attempts to develop practical guidelines for the successful implementation of BA based on the empirical study of BA practices among Korean firms.