Do market research within relevant business segments using European B2B company data

Companies need market research to make decisions when expanding to new markets or launching new products. When looking for relevant companies within a particular industry where there are not a lot of players, a manual Google search might be more than enough.

But a manual search might not be efficient when a significant number of companies needs to be evaluated, when several countries need to be covered, and when broader market dynamics need to be taken into account. In this case it would make sense to rely on the HitHorizons database.

HitHorizons data can help with questions like:

• How big is the market in which I want to launch my product?
• Who are the key players in this market?
• Who are the main competitors?
• How much do they generate in sales?
• What is my current market share?
• What market share can I gain?

Here is how you can do market research within industries and countries relevant for your business

Let’s say your company produces parts for car manufacturers and looks for new customers within the EU. To find relevant companies using HitHorizons Screener, you will need to use just 2 filters - region (in this case EU27) and SIC Code (in this case 3711 - Manufacturing motor vehicle/car bodies). HitHorizons Screener will show you a list of companies that fulfil your criteria - 12,523 companies total. You can refine your search further by adding more filters such as sales, number of employees, date of establishment, company type, etc.

You can export all company data (name, address, sales, number of employees, contact details) in CSV and work with it in any tool you use (CRM, ERP, analytics software, data visualisation tools, etc.).

Here is how you can better understand relevant markets using HitHorizons data

Number of companies operating in Manufacturing motor vehicles/car bodies (SIC Code 3711) within individual EU countries: Spain (1,927), Germany (1,807), and France (1,578) have the highest number of companies operating in this sector. Overall, 86.9% of all companies operate in the top 10 countries.

Number of employees in companies operating in Manufacturing motor vehicles/car bodies (SIC Code 3711) within individual EU countries: Germany is a clear leader with 927,000 employees working in that industry, followed by Italy (80,000), and Spain (78,000).

Sales of companies operating in Manufacturing motor vehicles/car bodies (SIC Code 3711) within individual EU countries: Total annual sales of this sector in the EU are EUR 733B. Germany generates more than EUR 198M. Romania is second with EUR 101M. Sweden is third with EUR 44M.

Top EU companies operating in Manufacturing motor vehicles/car bodies (SIC Code 3711) within individual EU countries (by annual sales): Germany's VOLKSWAGEN AG is a clear leader with more than EUR 220B in annual sales. That’s about 30% of the entire sector in the EU. French PSA AUTOMOBILES SA is second with annual sales of EUR 65B. German AUDI AG is third with EUR 55B.

EU companies operating in Manufacturing motor vehicles/car bodies (SIC Code 3711) with more than EUR 1B in annual sales: Out of more than 12,000 companies operating in this sector in the EU27, only 60 companies fulfil this annual sales criterion. These 60 companies have total annual sales of more than EUR 671B. That’s 91.5% of the entire industry’s total. The most significant number of companies operate in Germany (10), France (10), and Spain (8).

Here is how you can better understand your market position using HitHorizons data

HitHorizons provides access to sales and number of employees statistics directly in the profiles of individual companies.

You can benchmark your sales performance not only within your sector (SIC Code) but also within an entire industry, country, region, or a combination of a specific country and industry. The same goes for the number of employees statistics.