LARGE ENTERPRISES AND THEIR HEADQUARTERS AND BRANCHES IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Decision about location of headquarters or branches is essential task for large enterprises. In this case the decision-making is influenced by large amount of location factors which are of both quantitative and qualitative character. Although traditional location factors, such as geographic location or infrastructure are of priory of interest in decision-making on the location of head office and branches, it is obvious that the significance of other location factors is considerably different. The aim of paper is to analyse and evaluate the differences in the preferences of location factors within the process of the collocation of the headquarters and branch offices. The data used in this paper were obtained in the questionnaire survey and are mainly of qualitative character. It is apparent, that head offices of enterprises with foreign owners more intensively perceive soft location factors. On the contrary, purely domestic firms consider mainly classical factors of economic nature. When dealing with decision-making on the location of enterprises branches, these differences disappear. The effect of individual factors on the location of headquarters and branches is rather different.