Firmografie

Firmografie, or firmography, is the collection and analysis of data about organizations used for business research, market analysis, and sales targeting. In B2B contexts, firmographics provide a structured description of companies and enable comparisons across industries, regions, and sizes. It complements consumer demographics in market profiling.

Typical variables include industry or sector, company size (employee count or revenue), geographic location, legal form, ownership structure, year founded, parent–subsidiary relationships, and international presence. Other commonly recorded attributes are contact details, website, annual sales, and functional units such as subsidiaries or business units.

Data sources include corporate registries, financial statements, business directories, credit agencies, commercial databases, press releases, and publicly available web content. Data quality depends on coverage, timeliness, and standardization. To enable cross-dataset comparisons, firmographic data are harmonized to common schemas using standards such as NAICS, SIC, or NACE codes. Privacy and data protection considerations apply when processing commercially sensitive information.

Applications encompass market research, segmentation for marketing and sales, account-based marketing, lead scoring, partner and channel management, competitive intelligence, risk assessment, and supply chain analysis. Firms use firmographics to identify target customers, benchmark performance, and model market potential.

Limitations include incomplete records, outdated entries, varying definitions of size, and regional data gaps. Trends in firmography emphasize data integration with technographic and behavioral data, automation of data collection, and improved data quality through standardized taxonomies and third-party verification.