In today's world, where large amounts of data are generated from a wide variety of sources, new potentials and fields of application are emerging. One extremely interesting field of application is supply chain management in the retail sector, which offers a wide range of potential applications for big data. However, the availability of data alone is by no means a guarantee of a company's competitiveness and competitive edge. Without effective and targeted use and knowledge acquisition, which can also be referred to as big data analytics (BDA), no valuable information can be generated from the data pools. This thesis deals with the current status quo of BDA use in European retail in terms of applications, challenges and future potential identified by practitioners. The research questions are defined in the introduction in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 describes the research design of this thesis. Systematic literature research is conducted to answer the theory-based research questions and the practical status quo is recorded by means of semi-structured expert interviews. Chapter 3 provides a theoretical basis for the independent areas of supply chain management and big data analytics as well as explanations of terms and their definitions. Chapters 4 and 5 extract applications and challenges from selected literature sources. Chapter 6 covers the entire practical part. As part of the expert interviews, seven experts from companies with a cumulative trading volume of over 23 billion euros were interviewed about the applications, challenges and future potential of using BDA as part of their supply chain management. The results of these interviews form the basis for answering the practical research questions. Chapter 7 contains a discussion, followed by a summary of the entire thesis in chapter 8. In summary, the main theoretical and practical applications can be identified in forecasting, which is pursued with different objectives. A high degree of commonality has been identified in the challenges and barriers. Data management is the biggest hurdle in both theory and practice. However, practice identifies a category that was not identified in any literature source. This challenge lies in the complexity that arises from the interdisciplinary nature of the two areas in combination and which creates a need for data analysts with a strong understanding of business. For the future, the experts see AI and networked data as a trend that will open up new potential. The status quo of companies can be described as a preparatory phase for a later use of BDA. The companies currently use data analytics across the board, but no company was able to identify the integration of large volumes of unstructured data (big data).
Date of Award | 2024 |
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Original language | German (Austria) |
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Supervisor | Robert Zimmermann (Supervisor) |
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Potentialanalyse von SCM-Big-Data-Analytics im europäischen Handel
Ostrowski, M. P. (Author). 2024
Student thesis: Master's Thesis