Abstract
Customer behavioural data have become critical strategic resources, yet conventional perspectives treat them as separable assets amenable to generic manipulation capabilities. This view overlooks fundamental complexities arising when data emerge from and influence ongoing customer-firm interactions. We develop a framework examining how temporal requirements (real-time versus batch processing), infrastructural dependencies (simple digital versus complex physical-digital arrangements), and control strategies across data commodification stages shape viable business models. Analysing these dimensions reveals four archetypal configurations, each requiring distinct organizational capabilities and governance approaches. Our framework demonstrates that behavioural customer data become firm-specific, non-replicable assets only when data governance choices align coherently with business model designs around customer engagement. We contribute to strategy by explicating mechanisms through which co-created data generate competitive advantage and by clarifying how solutions business models extend firm boundaries to encompass customers as active value co-creators rather than passive transactional partners.