University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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theories focus on the transferability of advantages and on the replicability of the
general international advantage of the enterprise, which is a function of the mobility
of the factors that have produced it (geographical specificity) and of their
effectiveness in a given country (tacit knowledge) (Hu 1995).
Also, the studies on industrial districts have underlined the variety of places and the
relationships between places as an essential element in the generation of competitive
advantages (or disadvantages) of a country, and of the enterprises located in the
industrial zone.
In an industrial district, interconnections among economic-productive and socialcultural
conditions play a non-secondary role in business profitability. In 1919,
Marshall coined the term industrial atmosphere, reflecting the joint result of a local
community’s system of values, institutions and rules on development. He promoted
a holistic vision of the local system in which the improvement of productive
knowledge and the formation of incremental innovative processes are realised
through the net of informal relationships that established in the district (Marshall
1919: 875).
Subsequently in that contributions in which the unity of investigation moves from the
district system, dear to Marshall, to the enterprise inserted in a district, it is
underlined as the district firm should have a different behaviour from an isolated
enterprise or from an enterprise belonging to another productive system. The district
acts on the enterprise, moulding and conditioning its fundamental character and
creating an industrial atmosphere within social, cultural, historical and productive
components that influences the character and the behaviour of the enterprise
(Ferrucci & Varaldo 1993).
The influence of the social-cultural and institutional context on the economy of
enterprise is revealed, above all, through human capital, which is moulded from the
values and from the traditions of a specific country and of a specific environmental
context. Therefore the "quality" of social-cultural context becomes a decisive factor
of the competitiveness of the district enterprise. It is a primary factor in a territory’s
competitiveness that is attributable to irreducible or hardly reducible factors,
determining how much is not exportable from one country to another and
representing an expression of the cultural identity of a system-country.
Finally, the studies of international marketing of the concepts of impact of the
country of origin (IPO) and made in have underlined the influence of the industrial
origin of products on consumer purchase. These studies have appraised the
predisposition of the consumer toward products for which the technological and
operational superiority of the country of production is generally recognised.
Consumers use the image of the country of production as an indicator of quality
when there are not able to appraise the real qualitative attributes of the product and
when they don't have previous consumption experience. In these cases, their
purchase process is guided by the image that they have formed of the country from a
range of elements including not only information about the country (politics, level of
economic and social development, traditions, etc.), but also the affective components
and the stereotypes or rather the diffused preconceptions to international level
(Usunier & Lee 2005: 573).