Synergetic Effect of Entrepreneurial Orientation and Big Data Analytics for Competitive Advantage and SMEs Performance

Small and medium enterprises are considered the backbone of any developing economy. However, the growth rate of small and medium enterprises in Pakistan is low because of performance issues. Poor performance is because of traditional methods, whereas the world is moving towards digitalization. The literature on performance in developed countries identified the importance of big data analytics and entrepreneurial orientation for gaining competitive advantage and higher performance. Hence, this study has considered entrepreneurial orientation and big data analytics the fundamental element for gaining a competitive advantage to achieve high performance. The data has been collected from purposefully chosen 100 firms implementing big data analytics for decision making. The data was collected using an adopted questionnaire with a 7-Likert Scale for measuring the responses. The owners and managers of the firms were chosen to represent small and medium enterprises. After ensuring the instrument's reliability, direct impacts of entrepreneurial orientation and big data have been analyzed. The results revealed that entrepreneurial orientation and big data analytics have a substantial direct impact on performance, and the two variables explained 41.5% variation in performance. Afterward, competitive advantage was introduced in the model, and it was observed that competitive advantage has significantly increased explained variation to 53.9%. The mediating role of competitive advantage between big data analytics and performance was significant at a 5% significance level. In contrast, the mediating role of competitive advantage between entrepreneurial orientation and performance was significant at a 10% significance level. The findings ensured that big data analytics is crucial for firms' higher performance, growth, and survival in the digital era. The findings contribute to the resource-based view by adding the role of big data analytics and extending the theory to performance, limiting it to competitive advantage.