Datadriven förändring: Det är svårt att lära gamla hundar sitta - En kvalitativ studie om att vara datadriven i den svenska detaljhandeln

Sammanfattning: Retail companies have an enormous amount of customer data today. This gives them the opportunity to become more data driven in their decision making, by allowing them to analyze and understand their customers better, as well as creating insights that can be used when building strategies and increasing customer value. Therefore, the most important part of being data driven in the retail industry for companies is to take advantage of the data, or more specifically customer data, that they possess, in order to create and sustain competitive advantages. Today many companies talk about being or becoming data driven, however it has not yet been studied in an academic context what the Swedish retail companies' perception of this really is or how they actively work with their customer data today. Previous studies has focused on benefits and challenges of becoming data driven, although they have not specifically researched this in a retail context or highlighted the companies' attitude towards the future. The purpose of this study is to create a deeper understanding of Swedish retail companies and how data driven they are today. This will be done by answering three research questions: How does retail companies work with their customer data today? What challenges does retail companies face when working with customer data? What does retail companies think will be required to become more data driven in the future? In order to gain a deeper analysis of the challenges companies face when working with customer data as well as their attitude toward becoming more data driven in the future, the thesis will be based on a qualitative study consisting of eleven interviews with Swedish retail companies. The findings of this study show a broadness in regards to the extent of which companies work with and analyze customer data today. This spread is apparent in the companies' work with advanced analytics as well as how integrated the insight- and analytics teams are with the rest of the organization. Furthermore, the study finds that the biggest challenges for companies to become more data driven is the company culture, in addition to lack of resources and adequate systems. Lastly, two main themes was identified in reference to what the companies think will be required to become more data driven in the future. These were an increased availability of data in the entire organization along with an increased, cross border, cooperation between the analytics, IT and business teams.