The study at hand is subject to diverse limitations. Amongst other things, the nine studies
were only in parts comparable. That means that the size of the enterprises, the type of
surveys, focal subjects, interviewees and the way the studies were analyzed was different. So,
not every study explained the definition of SMEs that was applied for the study explicitly. In
this respect we can assume that the studies generally examined SMEs, however, deviations
from the strict definition of SMEs as determined by the EU Europäische Kommission, 2003
cannot be excluded. It is therefore recommendable to conduct another survey to verify the
results.