A Content Analysis-Based Review of Blockchain Technology’s Contribution to Business Competitive Advantage

Beyond blockchain’s essential characteristics and utility, it remains unclear how its adoption can improve business competitiveness. Specifically, discussions about how firms that adopt blockchain can gain a competitive advantage have been preliminary. This study, therefore, provides a content analysis-based review of blockchain literature using VOSviewer that identifies the co-occurrence of keywords from 61 relevant journal articles and reveals three emerging themes of research. The themes are (i) firm-level, (ii) technological-level, and (iii) industry-level research. A discussion of the research from these themes shows how blockchain technology adoption can contribute to a firm's competitive advantage. We demonstrate this by exploring the practical implications of use cases among firms from various industries. The study concludes by identifying research gaps and offering suggestions for future studies.