Corporate information database

July 10, 2013 12:49 PM

My friend is looking for a resource that will identify by states buyer contact information for large retail companies. She is a "key account representative" for a national company with a presence in half of the states in the US, and wants to find information regarding buyers for large national retailers. Years ago there was publication called "Contact Influential" that supplied this sort of info. I'm marginally familiar with Hoover's, and believe it is along these lines. Does the hive have any other suggestions?
posted by ecollie to Work & Money (3 answers total)

LinkedIn? I think sites like LinkedIn and Jigsaw.com have mostly killed the market for curated lists of contacts. It's all out there online now. Hoovers typically only track very senior executives. It might have the VP of Purchasing, but not much lower than that.
posted by COD at 1:36 PM on July 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Additionally: ZoomInfo, CrunchBase (for tech companies) and Xing.

Data quality varies wildly; I think LinkedIn's self-curated model (as people have incentive to keep their own information up to date) gives the most up-to-date results but YMMV.
posted by flipper at 2:03 PM on July 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Chain Store Guide.
posted by Dansaman at 4:08 PM on July 10, 2013 [1 favorite]