From Data to Decisions: Marketing Analytics, Mental Performance, and Firm Growth in an Emerging Market

Small firms account for over 90% of businesses globally, most having fewer than 10 employees. We investigate the causal impact of a marketing analytics solution on such small firms and their entrepreneurs. Although analytics is widely promoted to enhance business performance, empirical evidence on its effects, particularly for individual entrepreneurs, remains limited. We study how the solution affects (i) small firms in emerging markets and (ii) entrepreneurs managing these firms. Using a randomized controlled field experiment with 550 Rwandan firms, we find novel evidence of changes at both the entrepreneur and business levels. First, technology interaction is initially low, but by month three, usage increases as managers grow more reliant on analytics. Second, objective ability and psychological tests reveal the analytics solution has a positive causal impact on entrepreneurs’ mental performance, including reasoning, memory, logic, and calculations. At the organization level, it enhances business practices by impacting (i) adoption of product management activities and (ii) spillovers to accounting practices. Finally, the marketing analytics bundle boosts firms’ financial performance: treated firms report 36.4% higher monthly sales and 29.2% higher profits relative to control. Comparisons with a placebo group, which hold smartphone and internet access constant, confirm that the analytics solution itself drives meaningful performance gains. These results offer insights for marketing practitioners aiming to leverage company data, policymakers promoting firm growth and financial inclusion, and stakeholders interested in data-driven decision making more broadly.

History: Catherine Tucker served as the senior editor.

Funding: This work was supported by the London School of Economics and Political Science; the INSEAD Kurt Björklund MBA’96J Research Fund; the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago; Mays Business School at Texas A&M University; the DFID-ESRC Growth Research Programme; the Stanford King Center on Global Development; the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies; the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation; and the Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries initiative. Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries (PEDL) initiative.

Supplemental Material: The web appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2025.0292.