A Business Model Taxonomy for Data Marketplaces

Abstract

Companies are increasingly reliant on internal and external data sources to innovate their products and services. Currently, companies produce data for their own usage and store it in data silos afterwards. This hinders secondary data usage, when companies reuse external data. Data marketplace owners enable data trade across companies, but companies rarely trade industrial datasets on multilateral data marketplaces. Data marketplace owners apply business models to transform technical ideas into functioning value propositions. Research about business models of data marketplaces is required to further advance the development of data marketplaces. Literature mainly focuses on one type of data marketplace with a market orientation and independent ownership, whereas those data marketplaces do not move past the conceptual stage. To find viable business models of data marketplaces, we researched various types of data marketplaces that range from hierarchical to market orientation and private to independent ownership in the B2B automotive industry. The research question states "What business model archetypes are applied by data marketplace owners from different types of data marketplaces in the B2B automotive industry?" To answer this question, we created a taxonomy in which six data marketplaces are classified. Based on business model patterns in our taxonomy, we derived four business model archetypes. These are (i) the aggregating data marketplace archetype, (ii) the aggregating data marketplace with additional brokering service archetype, (iii) consulting data marketplace and (iv) the facilitating data marketplace archetype. Owners of data marketplaces with a market orientation and independent ownership, the data marketplace type that remains conceptual, apply the facilitating data marketplace archetype. They perform a data brokering service, but fail to attract customers. We advise them to complement their data brokering service with value-adding services such as a customized map service, data quality reviews or personal consults about data sale and purchase at their platform to attract more customers. Future researchers are recommended to extend our taxonomy by classifying additional data marketplaces from various orientation and ownership types. This may validate our results or generate new business model dimensions and characteristics.