From an economic policy perspective, company location decisions play a particularly important role because decisions in favor of a specific location for the relevant region are associated with an expansion or at least securing the number of available jobs. In addition to these direct employment effects of location decisions, a number of indirect effects are to be expected. This article is the first of three planned articles on location issues. This article will first examine the overall dimensions of the problem of location selection and which factors have an influence on location selection. The article also provides an overview of the existing empirical evidence on the importance of different location factors.