Ranking Factors Affecting Sustainable Competitive Advantage from The Business Intelligence Perspective: Using Content Analysis And F-TOPSIS

Abstract

Sustainable competitive advantage, as a key factor in business success, ensures that the company is able to dominate the market with differentiated products and services over a long period of time. This advantage is especially achieved through business intelligence, since smart decisions, leveraging meaningful data and analytics, and continuous process improvement help the company maintain this advantage and experience sustainable growth. The aim of this study is to rank the factors influencing sustainable competitive advantage from a business intelligence standpoint. The research methodology consists of two stages: qualitative and quantitative. In the first step, content analysis was performed to extract indicators from previous studies. In the second step, indicators were ranked using the F-TOPSIS method. Factors affecting sustainable competitive advantage from the business intelligence viewpoint were categorized into 5 criteria, including 27 sub-criteria. The 5 main criteria are customer relationship management, smart marketing, soft and hard organizational factors, and the mental image of the product, respectively. In the second step, the sub-criteria in each criterion were ranked. In customer relationship management, the most important sub-criterion is effective interaction with customers. In smart marketing, the most important sub-criterion is feedback and continuous improvement. Among the soft and hard organizational factors, the most important sub-criteria are support from senior management and technology and infrastructure. In the mental image of the product, the most important sub-criterion is social responsibility.