Italy is renowned around the world for its design, fashion, Mediterranean cuisine and other Made in Italy products. These products are often associated with known and famous brands, especially in the luxury sector, but many less well-known Italian firms operating in more technical industries, such as in the mechanical or electronic sectors, have a major presence in international markets. These traditional Made in Italy sectors as well as the specialized product sectors create the so-called \u20184Fs\u2019 of Italian excellence. The first group together traditional consumer goods linked to the person and the home. Specialized product sectors include the automation-\u2013mechanical-\u2013rubber-\u2013plastics sector. Despite offering excellent quality products in these sectors, Italy has a lower perceived image than other countries such as Germany.
Country of oOrigin (COO) literature is mainly focused on consumer sectors. The abundance of literature on the subject in the industrial sector is lower, and among theorists, two main research streams can be identified. Some believe that COO has the same importance in the consumer market, while others assert that industrial customers operating in a more informed way are less likely to be influenced by it.
This present contributionchapter falls within this debate, with the aim of verifying if the COO effect really matters in business-to-business (BTB) relations, particularly in business relations between firms that belong to markets with high cultural distance. We selected China with reference to this investigation. A second objective is to identify the elements that come into play in the evaluation of Italian offers and whether there are differences of perception according to the business sector considered.
The methodology used foresees a study developed over three stages (the first stage is quantitative, the second and third stages are qualitative) on a sample of 338 firms in the first quantitative phase and 14 in the subsequent qualitative phases
