A measurement instrument for digitization: scale development and impact on new product performance

Digitization is recognized as both a disrupting force in business and a main driver of new product and service performance, thereby serving as the basis for sustaining a competitive advantage. With this in mind, organizational digitization needs to be operationalized for researchers to allow an empirical assessment of its impact on performance and for organizations to gain a transparent view of the status quo of their digitization. However, research into the measurement of digitization and its impact on new product and service performance is lacking. We develop and validate a measurement scale for the degree of digitization and assess its impact on the new product and service performance of organizations. We operationalize the degree of digitization along five dimensions - digital analytics, digital operations, digital marketing and sales, digital ecosystem, and digital products and services - examining the relationship between each dimension and new product and service performance using a sample of 423 randomly drawn organizations from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The results show that our newly developed measurement scale is statistically valid and suggest that all dimensions of our construct apart from the dimension digital ecosystem positively impact new product and service performance.