Regional Products and Internationalization Processes in the Internet Era: Does Location Still Matter?

This chapter aims to critically analyze the relevance of location for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) producing regional products (RPs) and selling them internationally by e-commerce. This type of product is quite relevant in the Italian economy, being Italy the most important country in the world for the amount of RPs (4.120 food specialties while data on craft ones are not available) and the second for EU protected designations (19,51 per cent of PDO, PGI and TSG). Such products have a total turnover of € 7,6 billion, with exports of € 1,4 billion €. With respect to opportunities offered by e-commerce to SMEs internationalization, two ideas seems to be generally accepted. Firstly, Internet and electronic transactions (Zwass, 1998) are supposed to provide SMEs and bigger companies the same access to the global markets. Secondly, it is assumed that e-commerce may reduce boundaries of distance among markets and make location not so relevant. In other words, both production and market areas- become bigger and bigger, being possible for manufacturers to produce and sell products everywhere. Moreover the paper focuses attention on business opportunities Internet offers to SMEs, especially in terms of internationalization strategies. The paper is structured in two main sections, in the first of which a series of reflections regarding the definition of RPs are presented and a short literature review on the internationalization processes of such products is conducted. In the second section, empirical findings related to manufacturers selling by e-commerce in a specific region (Abruzzo, Italy) are presented and discussed.