Psychographics and
Firmographics in Big Data
IS 682, May 1, 2014
Pouneh Rousta and Scott Sosebee
Demographics to Psychographics
 Demographics : Gender, geographic location, marital status,
WHO
 The year that someone was born will not tell you how likely
he is to buy your product.
 Psychographics: Activity, interest, opinion (AIOs), attitudes,
values, Behavior, WHY, WHAT
 What types of offers get downloaded the most? What styles
of blog posts get the most interaction? What times do emails
get opened most often?
Two Different Views
targeting 14 million consumers to sell 50,000 units OR 500 sales from
every 1,000 people you marketed to
Where to Find Psychographic Data?
 Sales and Customer Service Teams
 Surveys
 Social Media
 Focus Groups or Group Interviews
 Profiles
 Posts
Psychographics and Big Data
 As of 2012, about 2.5 exabytes of data are
created each day
 Amazon, GE, and Netflix are using insights from
Big Data to deliver better personalization,
product recommendations, and enhanced
customer experiences
 Forbes: Big Data is the biggest game-changing
opportunity for marketing and sales since the
Internet
How Hyundai used Psychographics?
 Assurance program in 2009
 “After a purchase or lease from a certified Hyundai dealer and the
customer paid his first two payments, a buyer could simply hand
back his keys to Hyundai with no negative impact on his credit
report (up to $7,500) if he lost his income source.”
 14% increase in sales, Fewer than 100 keys of 435,000 vehicles
going back to Hyundai
Sources of Psychographics Data
 Claritas – MyBestSegments Provides a segmentation system defining
every neighborhood in the U.S. by zip code in terms of 66 distinct lifestyle
types.
 VALS The system identifies current and future opportunities by
segmenting the consumer marketplace on the basis of the personality traits
that drive consumer behavior.
 Consumer Expenditure Survey This Bureau of Labor Statistics program
provides information on the buying habits of American consumers,
including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer unit
characteristics (families, singles, etc.).
What are Firmographics?
firmographics
 Demographics = people
 Firmographics = organizations
 Used to define a target market for business to business sales
“Firmographics are descriptive attributes of firms that can be used to
aggregate individual firms into meaningful market segments.”
-Tim J. Smith
Goals of Firmographic Analysis
 Identify Target Audience
 Convert Leads to Sales
US Businesses
28 Million
6 Million
Active US Businesses
1,000 Contacts
Dimensions of Firmographics
 Industry
 N.A. Industry Classification System
(NAICS)
 Standard Industrial Classification
(SIC)
NAICS
Definition
22
Utilities
23
Construction
31-33
42
Manufacturing
Wholesale Trade
44-45
Retail Trade
48-49
Transportation and Warehousing
51
Information
Dimensions of Firmographics
 Location
 City, state, country continent
 Metropolitan statistical area (MSA)
 Location is a natural market segment
Dimensions of Firmographics
 Size
 Revenue
 Number of employees
# of
Employees
Size
# of Firms
% of Firms
<5
Very Small
3,618,000
61.0%
5-19
Small
1,677,000
28.3%
20-499
Medium
616,700
10.4%
500-4,999
Large
27,570
0.5%
>5,000
Very Large
1,956
0.03%
Dimensions of Firmographics
 Status and Structure
 Relationship of the company to
another
 Legal status of company

Stand-alone

Franchise

Subsidiary

Limited liability company

Private

Shareholder

Government
Dimensions of Firmographics
 Performance
 Duration of existence
 Rate of growth or decline
 Profits and losses

Key indictor
Traditional Sources of Firmographic Data
 Vendors
 Dunn & Bradstreet, Hoovers.com, Experian, Salesforce
 Government
 Census
What’s a More Accurate Predictor?
Web Form to Access
White Paper
 People Lie
 70% of data received by web
forms is inaccurate
Buyer’s Actual Behavior
 Browsing habits and Twitter
follows are better predictors
of awareness and readiness
to buy
Better Predictor
Big Data and Firmographics
 Expanding Traditional Sources
 Social Web, psychographics
 Predictive Ability
 Awareness
 Readiness to buy
 Big Data Analytic Tools
 Natural language processing
 Data mining
 Marketing as a Cost Center
 Expected to turn leads ready to
buy over to sales
Big Data’s Impact
 Lead Scoring
 Ranking leads based on sales
readiness
 Establish an Ideal Buyer Profile
 Social Score (Awareness)

Takes into account all aspects
of a buyers digital footprint
 Behavioral Score (Readiness)
 Web site visits, searches
 Used to determine if buyers
are ready to purchase
Example of an Ideal
Buyer Profile
 Interest in cloud computing
 Attends Gartner conference
 Follows certain industry
analysts on Twitter
 Has knowledge about
VMware and Amazon cloud
Psychographics and Firmographics
Hands-on
 Facebook Ads Demo
http://facebook.com/ads/create
Questions?