Does communication support intangibles? Empirical evidences on Monza and Brianza’ SMEs

Intangibles are becoming increasingly important to enterprises for their growth, especially for SMEs, which play a vital role in Italian economic development. This is mainly due to a highly competitive business environment where resources are limited and knowledge is often seen as a commodity. This makes it difficult for firms to differentiate themselves over their competitors, where intangibles became the main drivers for competitive advantage. This research tries to provide empirical findings on the role of communication developing intangibles assets, with a focus on the SMEs of the territory of Monza and Brianza. Through a quantitative analysis on 886 SMEs, we developed a PCA on the variables of communication objectives and tools, in order to represent the graphical distribution of respondents with respect to their use of communication. The added value of the research concerns the significant empirical evidence to the how and why for SMEs when implementing their communication strategies.