Brave New World 2.0? How Big Data Affects Managerial Decision-Making in Marketing

Digitalization has generated massive amounts of available data sources. Consequently, firms aim to exploit this additional value. Potential negative consequences of Big Data for companies have not been examined yet – neither in practice nor in research. Ad-dressing this research gap, the current investigation first uncovers unfavorable manage-rial outcomes and behaviors generated by Big Data. The results from an experiment (study 1) show that executives tend to blindly rely on Big Data even in a domain where this may be misleading (i.e., innovation management). Interestingly, this relationship seems to be particularly evident for top managers. A second study not only replicates the findings in a correlational setting but beyond sheds light on its mechanism. Big Data is found to activate executives’ promotion focus leading them to become less defensive and more reckless in their decision behavior. Implications for research and practice as well as limitations are further discussed.