transportation, rural tourism activities, mostly room-letting, combined or not with
restaurants and/or other services, such as financial services or tourism and property
agents.
The questionnaire recorded in detail each firm’s networking and innovative activities
and attempted to capture several dimensions of business performance. More specifically
we tried to capture the level of the firm’s material input produced (not traded) by local
firms and the level of the firm’s output directed to customers outside the region or to
trading companies that export it outside the region, in terms of percentages of total
inputs or total outputs. Thus we avoided to record actual numbers (quantities or values)
of inputs or outputs in order to get more accurate responses away from intentionally
misleading figures. Moreover, we attempted to examine whether each firm was a part of
suppliers or customers network or exercised spot trade for inputs and outputs. We
considered that a firm is part of a network of businesses if the firm carries out
transactions (for inputs or outputs) that are long established and repeated with a
predetermined frequency, and exercises spot trade if its business partners change over
time and its business relationships are spurious. These networks may be horizontal in
spatial terms, if most of the businesses involved in the network are local or vertical if
most of the businesses involved in the network are located outside the area. Thus, we
could characterize a business as belonging to a horizontal or vertical, suppliers or
customers network or as exercising spot trade. All variants of business network were in
operation in the two case study areas as we actually met businesses belonging to a
horizontal or vertical suppliers network and exercising spot trade for customers or vice
versa or belonging to a horizontal network for suppliers and a vertical for customers or
vice versa. Furthermore, we asked whether firms were trading with the same sources for
finance, advice and consultancy services. For finance there was a considerable variation
among firms attending repeatedly the same sources and firms spoting the best chances
each time. For advisory and consultancy services there was not any great variability as
most firms seek local consultants, especially accountants and have with them
established relationships. Finally we recorded, for all firms irrespective of whether they
are part of a network or not, whether business agreements are formal, i.e., governed by
written legal documents and/or contracts and are subject of legal dispute, or are
informal, i.e., are based on trust and on verbal agreements.
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