0019-8501/00/$–see front matterPII S0019-8501(99)00063-2

Industrial Marketing Management

29, 243–254 (2000)© 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010

Cross-National Industrial Mail Surveys

Why Do Response Rates Differ between Countries?

Anne-Wil Harzing

This article describes the results of a cross-national indus-trial mail survey in 22 countries. Response rates are shown tovary considerably across countries, and several explanationsfor these differences in response rates are put forward andtested. Our results show that, when compared with nonrespon-dents, respondents are geographically and culturally closer tothe Netherlands (the country from which the questionnaireswere sent), are more internationally oriented, work in smallersubsidiaries and in companies not listed on the Global Fortune500, and come from countries with a lower level of power dis-tance. In addition, there is some indication that English lan-guage capacity might be a factor influencing response rates aswell. Based on these results, various recommendations for im-proving response rates in cross-national mail surveys are putforward. © 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

Globalization of the world economy means thatknowledge of the international market becomes increas-ingly important for both researchers and practitioners inthe field of marketing. To date, however, little is knownabout the cross-cultural validity of marketing theoriesand models. More cross-national research is necessary toalleviate this problem and mail surveys are the only feasi-ble data collection method for research in more than afew countries. Methodological problems in internationalor cross-cultural research recently have attracted the at-tention of quite a number of researchers who have pro-vided comprehensive overviews of issues to be consid-ered. [1–11]. The more practical and mundane issues,such as the choice of incentives to increase response ratesor the response rates to expect from different countries,are discussed in only a handful of articles that give frag-mented information about a very limited number of coun-

Address correspondence to Anne-Wil Harzing, Lecturer in InternationalManagement, University of Bradford, Management Centre, Emm Lane,Bradford, West Yorkshire BD9 4GL, United Kingdom.

244

tries (see the literature review for a discussion of thesestudies). Two recent articles in this journal [12, 13] cameto the same conclusion and recommended an increasedfocus on research concerning cross-national industrialmail surveys.

In contrast to the paucity of articles on cross-nationalmail surveys, there is a overwhelming number of publica-tions available on the response rate effect of every imagin-able aspect of mail surveys in a “domestic” setting: numberof questions, questionnaire length, the color of the ques-tionnaire, user friendly questionnaire formats, tickingversus circling answers, the name of the researcher (na-tive or nonnative American), anonymity, deadlines, typeof outgoing postage, type of return envelope, precontacts,follow-ups, offer of results, personalization, topic inter-est, auspices of the survey, numerous types of incentives,color of the signature on the cover letter, response ratesof left- or right-handed respondents, use of handwrittenpostscripts and many, many more. A substantial numberof review articles on factors affecting response rates tomail surveys together cover hundreds of articles [13–19].The contrast between the maturity of this field of researchin a domestic setting and the virtual absence of articles inan international setting is striking. This article thereforeaims to fill part of this gap by describing the results of alarge-scale cross-national mail survey. Its main purposeis to illustrate differences in response rates betweencountries and to discuss the possible reasons for thesedifferences. We will first discuss the sparse literature thatis available about cross-national industrial mail surveys.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Cross-national mail surveys aiming at an industrialpopulation generate very low response rates. If question-naires are not either preceded or followed by telephonecontact, response rates typically vary between 6% and16% [20–26]. Although reminders usually increase re-sponse rates, a recent survey [27] received only 8.8% re-sponse with two mailings.

Low response rates form a serious threat for any re-searcher, since disappointing response rates might lead tosamples that are too small to draw any conclusions from.

In some cases, the researcher might even need to collectdata by using other research methods after having com-pleted a time and cost-intensive mail survey. In an inter-national context, however, there are virtually no alterna-tives to mail surveys if more than a couple of countriesare included. Generating reasonable response ratesshould therefore be one of the researcher’s top priorities.Very few studies have investigated response rates incross-national industrial mail surveys. A literature reviewin international business/management and marketingjournals revealed only five studies that focused on re-sponse rates and/or incentives in an international context.

Keown [28] showed that response rates in Japan werenearly two times as high as in Hong Kong for a similar(business) population. In addition, respondents in the twocountries differed in their response to incentives. Includ-ing a one dollar incentive doubled the response rate in Ja-pan but resulted in a zero response rate in Hong Kong.Ayal and Hornik [29] found foreign surveys to generatehigher responses than domestic surveys. However, thisresult was only significant for the consumer sample andnot for the sample of managers. Although, as expected bythe authors, the response rate in the U.S. was higher thanin Israel, this result was again only significant in the con-sumer sample. For a sample of business people in GreatBritain and the U.S., Jobber and Saunders [24] found theopposite result: domestic surveys generated higher re-sponse rates than foreign surveys. Contrary to the au-thors’ expectations, no significant differences were foundin response rates between the two countries. Dawson andDickinson [21] showed that a commemorative stamp sig-nificantly increased response rates in both the UK andGermany. Without the stamp incentive, response rates inCanada and the U.S. were higher than in the UK and Ger-many. With the stamp incentive, response rates werehighest in Japan. Jobber, Mirza, and Wee [23] tested theeffect of both enclosed (a bookmark) and promised (offerof results) incentives. Conforming to the literature on do-mestic mail surveys, enclosed incentives were more ef-fective in increasing response rates than promised incen-tives. Response rates did not differ significantly betweenthe three receiving countries: Singapore, Malaysia, andThailand.

Since so few articles systematically compare responserates between countries, we searched the last 18 volumes(1980–1997) of three mainstream international businessjournals,

Journal of International Business Studies

,

Man-agement International Review

, and

International Busi-ness Review

, and five marketing journals,

Industrial

ANNE-WIL HARZING is Lecturer in International Management

at the University of Bradford Management Centre.

245

Marketing Management

,

International Journal of Re-search in Marketing

,

International Marketing Review

,

Journal of Marketing

, and

European Journal of Market-ing

, for articles that mentioned differences in responserates in cross-national mail surveys, even though the arti-cle’s main focus was on other issues. Even this proce-dure, however, did not result in an overwhelming amountof information, since most articles about mail surveyswere either purely domestic (i.e., American in mostcases), were sent to one foreign country only, used sub-stantially different treatments for different countries, ordid not report differences in response rates. Surprisingly,a substantial number of articles did not even mention re-sponse rates at all and only reported the number of ques-tionnaires returned. Even so, a number of conclusionscan be drawn from the articles found in this process, thearticles discussed before and some selective other,mainly older, articles. In these conclusions, we focus onthe countries that are included in our own survey:

1. Response rates in Japan are higher than response rates inthe U.S. [27, 30–36]. Response rates in the U.S. arehigher than response rates in Japan [37]. In all studies,questionnaires were mailed from the U.S.

2. Response rates in the U.S. are higher than response ratesin European countries [20, 21, 32, 27, 35, 38–43]. In allstudies, questionnaires were mailed from the U.S.

3. Response rates in Japan are higher than response rates inEuropean countries [21, 27, 32, 35, 44]. In all studies,questionnaires were mailed from the U.S.

4. Response rates in Hong Kong are the lowest in the survey[20, 45, 28]. In all studies, questionnaires were mailedfrom the U.S.

5. Response rates in Norway are higher than response ratesin France. Questionnaires were mailed from Finland [46].

6. Response rates in the Netherlands are higher than re-sponse rates in Belgium [47]. Response rates in the Neth-erlands are higher than response rates in eight other Euro-pean countries [48]. In both studies, questionnaires weremailed from the Netherlands. Response rates in the Neth-erlands are higher than response rates in the U.K. andBelgium [49]. Questionnaires were mailed from the U.S.

7. Response rates in the UK are higher than response ratesin Germany. Questionnaires were mailed from the UK[50].

8. Domestic surveys generate higher responses than foreignsurveys [17, 51].

Although these studies do show a rather consistent pic-ture, especially concerning response rates in the U.S., Ja-pan, and Europe, in most studies questionnaires weremailed from the U.S. We therefore might not be able to

generalize the results to other countries. The next sectiondescribes a study that involved a cross-national mail sur-vey with questionnaires sent from a small Europeancountry.

METHODS AND RESULTS

The cross-national mail survey described below wasconducted as part of the author’s doctoral research,which focused on control mechanisms in multinationalcompanies. The empirical part involved mailing ques-tionnaires to CEOs and Human Resource Managers at theheadquarters of 122 multinationals and to the managingdirectors of 1,650 subsidiaries of these multinationals in22 different countries. Questionnaires were mailed fromMaastricht University, the Netherlands in two batches:one in October 1995 and one in January 1996. Remindersto the first batch were sent in January 1996, about threemonths after the original mailing. Reminders to the sec-ond batch were sent in March 1996, about six weeks afterthe original mailing. Questionnaires were printed on apale yellow paper and cover letters were mail merged foran individualized appeal. The questionnaire was sixpages long and contained 56, mostly closed-ended ques-tions. Incentives to increase response rates included anoffer of the results, an international committee of recom-mendation, a scanned photograph of the researcher, and atea bag attached to the letter, next to a PS: “Why don’tyou take a short break, have a nice cup of tea and fill outthe questionnaire right now, it will only take 10–15 min-utes”. In the reminder, we elaborated on this theme by in-cluding instant coffee for the addressees that did not liketea (see references [52] and [53] for a more extensive de-scription of the mailing procedures and incentives).

Response rates were calculated by dividing the num-ber of positive responses in both the first mailing and thereminder by the total number of deliverable question-naires. This formula has become customary in interna-tional research, because of the high number of undeliver-able questionnaires [21, 23–25, 28, 54]. The overallresponse rate of the survey was 20%, which compares fa-vorably with other cross-national mail surveys. Table 1shows the response rates for the different response cate-gories.

Although response rates varied slightly across indus-tries, these differences were not significant. Significantoverall differences in response rates were found for boththe country of location of headquarters (Chi-square25.334,

P

5

001) and the country of location of subsid-

246

iaries (Chi-square 51.545,

P

5

000). Employees fromMNCs headquartered in European countries are morelikely to respond than employees from either Americanor Japanese MNCs. Within Europe, the highest responserates can be found for MNCs from the smaller Europeancountries. The same pattern emerges if we look at re-sponse rates for the various subsidiary countries. Manag-ing directors from subsidiaries in small European coun-tries, such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, andthe Scandinavian countries were most likely to respond.Least likely to respond were managing directors fromsubsidiaries located in (Latin) America and Asia and inthe larger European countries. Notable exceptions are Ja-pan and Brazil, which have a relatively high responserate. Since about 40% of the managing directors were ex-patriates, we also calculated the response rate by nation-ality. Differences in response rates for different nationali-ties are even slightly more significant (Chi-square53.961,

P

5

000), and the pattern identified for subsid-

iary countries becomes even more pronounced. The rela-tively high response rate for Japan and Brazil was causedby a high response among expatriates and not by a partic-ularly high level of response from Japanese or Brazilianmanaging directors, although response rates are stillhigher than for the other Asian/Latin American countries.

These results largely confirm the findings of previousstudies. As in most of the previous studies, response ratesare higher in Japan (28.6%) than in either Europe(22.9%) or the U.S. (11.4%). Confirming the three two-country studies described above, response rates in Nor-way (40.6%) are higher than in France (13.6%), responserates in the UK (18.8%) are higher than in Germany(15.5%) and response rates in the Netherlands (26.6%)are higher than in Belgium (20.3%). Response rates forseven of the eight European countries in our sample thatwere also included in Brouthers and Dijkstra [48] werelower than for the Netherlands. And response rates forthe UK (18.8%) and Belgium (20.3%) were indeed lower

TABLE 1Response Rates for Different Industries, Countries, and Nationalities

Response Rate (%) Subsidiary Country Response Rate (%) Nationality Response Rate (%)

Industry Hong Kong 7.1 Hong Kongnese 0Computers 16.2 US 11.4 Venezuelan 0Electronics 17.1 Argentina 12.9 Singaporean 4.8Food and Beverages 18.4 France 13.6 Mexican 6.5Motor vehicles and parts 20.4 Singapore 13.6 Argentinean 9.1Paper (products) 20.6 Venezuela 13.8 Austrian 10.0Chemical (products) 21.3 Mexico 15.2 American 11.6Petroleum (products) 21.4 Germany 15.5 French 12.5Pharmaceutical 23.8 Spain 15.9 German 13.4

UK 18.8 Brazilian 14.3Country of location of headquarters Austria 19.0 Japanese 16.8

Belgium 20.3 Spanish 18.4Sweden 20.4 Swedish 19.6

US 14.3 Brazil 22.1 Belgian 20.4Japan 16.7 Italy 24.4 British 22.3France 18.6 Netherlands 26.6 Italian 25.8UK 19.7 Japan 28.6 Dutch 27.4Germany 21.8 Switzerland 29.8 Swiss 27.6Finland 24.0 Ireland 30.6 Finnish 28.0Sweden 24.6 Finland 32.0 Irish 32.4Switzerland 30.4 Norway 40.6 Norwegian 38.7Netherlands 31.5 Denmark 42.1 Danish 40.6

Response rates differ significantly

across countries.

247

than for the Netherlands (26.6%) [49]. In addition, as inthe studies referred to above, response rates in HongKong are the lowest in the survey. Since we mailed thesurvey from one country only, we cannot test the differ-ence in response rates between domestic and foreign sur-veys. One result from previous studies, however, isclearly contradicted by our findings: response rates inEurope are higher instead of lower than in the U.S. In ad-dition, our study shows differences in response rates be-tween countries that have not been included in cross-na-tional mail surveys before. The next section willtherefore explore these differences in response rates inmore detail.

Analysis of Differences in Response Rates

The previous section showed that there were large dif-ferences in response rates for respondents from differentcountries/nationalities. One reason for a low response ratein some countries might be the distance from the Nether-lands, both in a cultural and in a geographical sense. Al-though Ayal and Hornik [29] suggested that the noveltyeffect might induce higher response rates for foreign sur-veys, this is unlikely to be true for managing directors ofMNC subsidiaries, who might experience internationalcontacts daily. In this situation, we would expect respon-dents to be more likely to respond if the source of the ques-tionnaire is not too far removed from their own country,both in a geographical and in a cultural sense. Potential re-spondents are more likely to trust and relate to people thatare not too different from themselves. There is some sup-port for this contention from previous studies. First, do-mestic surveys tend to get a higher response rate than for-eign surveys [24, 51]. Second, response rates in Europeancountries or MNCs are lower than response rates for theU.S./American MNCs, when questionnaires are sent fromthe U.S. [11, 20, 21, 27, 32, 38, 41–43], thus suggestingthat geographical/cultural distance leads to a lower re-sponse rate. Supporting this contention, questionnairesmailed from the Netherlands/UK resulted in higher re-

sponse rates for these countries than for the other countriesincluded in the survey [47–50]. Finally, in a survey wherequestionnaires were sent from Norway, the response ratefor Finland was higher than for France, which is more dis-tant from Norway, both in a geographical and culturalsense. We therefore tested whether the geographical andcultural distance from the Netherlands was smaller for re-spondents than for nonrespondents. Geographical distancewas measured as the distance in kilometers between capi-tals, while cultural distance was measured using Kogutand Singh’s [55] formula, which summarizes cultural dis-tance between countries on each of Hofstede’s [56] dimen-sions. Table 2 shows that both geographical distance andcultural distance from the Netherlands are indeed signifi-cantly different between respondents and nonrespondentsand that the difference is in the expected direction, thusconfirming our proposition.

Higher response rates will be achieved if the potentialrespondent is interested in the study’s subject. We wouldexpect respondents with a more pronounced internationalorientation to be more interested in an international studyof control mechanisms in MNCs. We therefore testedwhether respondents had a more pronounced interna-tional orientation than nonrespondents. Two measureswere used to this effect. The first measure was the levelof foreign sales as a percentage of total sales for theMNC by which the respondent was employed. The sec-ond measure was aimed at a more aggregate level andmeasured the percentage of the respondent’s home coun-try’s GNP that was exported. As Table 2 shows, for bothmeasures there is a significant difference between re-spondents and nonrespondents in the expected direction,thus confirming our proposition. This result is supportedby two other observations from our study. First, thirdcountry managing directors (managing directors thathave neither the nationality from the host country norfrom the parent country) had a very high response rate.Third country nationals are often portrayed as “truly in-ternational managers”, because of their willingness to re-locate internationally. Their high response rate might

Geographical and cultural difference

negatively influence response rates.

248

therefore be caused by their keen interest in internationalissues. Second, the results from the questionnaires sent toheadquarters also indicated a higher level of foreign salesfor responding companies. This was true for both the re-sponses from HRM managers and from CEOs, althoughthe results were only significant in the former case.

A very simple reason for nonresponse might be thatthe respondent does not understand the language (En-glish) of the questionnaire. When preparing the survey,we assumed that managing directors of MNC subsidiar-ies would at least have a passive knowledge of the En-glish language. We might have been too optimistic in thisassumption, however. In addition, even if a potential re-spondent would have a reasonable knowledge of the En-glish language, responding to an English language ques-tionnaire would still require a larger effort than to one inhis/her native language. This might be a determining fac-tor in deciding not to respond to the questionnaire. Un-fortunately, we haven’t been able to assess the Englishlanguage capability of the individual respondents. Many

“low response nationals,” however, such as Argentine-ans, Austrians, Brazilians, French, Mexicans, and Vene-zuelans could generally be expected to have a more lim-ited English language capacity than most of the “highresponse nationals” such as Danes, Dutch, Irish, Fins,and Norwegians. On the other hand, the fact that two ofthe nationalities that had very low response rates, Ameri-cans and Singaporese, have English as their native/offi-cial language shows that English language capability iscertainly not the only factor influencing response rates.

In our study, we offered potential respondents the op-portunity to return a response card indicating that theydid not want to participate in the study and asked them tostate their reason for not wanting to do so. The largenumber of questionnaires received was the most promi-nent reason for not responding. One respondent at head-quarters level even indicated that their company receivedroughly 100 questionnaires each week. We might conse-quently conclude that the larger the number of question-naires a potential respondent receives, the lower the

TABLE 2Test of Factors Explaining Differences in Response Rates

Variable

Direction of relationshipOverall

(

n

5

1477)

EuropeanMNCs

(

n

5

851)

American andJapanese

MNCs (

n

5

626)

Non-Latin American

Subsidiaries (

n

5

1272)

European Subsidiaries

(

n

5

979)Expected Confirmed?

Cultural distance between NL and respondent’s home country

2

Yes Z

5

2

5.423* Z

5

2

3.649* Z

5

2

2.474

†

Z

5 2

4.071* Z

5 2

2.928

†

Geographical distance between NL and respondent’s home country

2

Yes Z

5

2

5.842* Z

5

2

3.616* Z

5 2

2.980

†

Z

5 2

4.205* Z

5 2

2.214

‡

Foreign sales for MNC as a whole (%)

1

Yes Z

5

2

4.204* Z

5

2

2.924

†

Z

5 2

1.198 n.s. Z

5 2

3.043* Z

5 2

2.597

†

Export/GNP respondent’s home country

1

Yes Z

5

2

7.441* Z

5

2

5.031* Z

5 2

3.643* Z

5 2

5.902* Z

5 2

4.667*Listed on Fortune 500?

2

Yes Z

5

2

2.634

†

Z

5

2

1.469

§

Z

5 2

1.042 n.s. Z

5 2

2.670

†

Z

5 2

2.250

‡

Number of subsidiary employees

2

Yes Z

5

2

1.683

‡

Z

5

2

1.368

§

Z

5 2

1.052 n.s. Z

5 2

2.084

‡

Z

5 2

1.514

§

Power distance of respondent’s homecountry

2

Yes Z

5

2

7.243* Z

5

2

4.274* Z

5 2

4.575* Z

5 2

5.678* Z

5 2

4.023*

n.s., not significant. Tests are all one tailed.*

P

,

.001.

†

P

,

.01.

‡

P

,

.05.

§

P

,

.1.

International orientation positively

influences response rates.

249

chance of response to each individual questionnaire. Wetherefore tested whether respondents in our sample couldgenerally be expected to receive fewer questionnairesthan nonrespondents. Two measures were used as aproxy for the number of questionnaires received. First,since many researchers focus their attention on MNCslisted on rankings such as the Fortune Global 500, em-ployees in these companies might receive more question-naires than employees in smaller companies, not listed onsuch rankings. For each subsidiary, we therefore investi-gated whether its parent company was listed on the 1994Fortune Global 500. In addition, larger MNC subsidiariesmight receive more questionnaires than smaller subsid-iaries, since larger subsidiaries are more likely to belisted on address lists and are more likely to be of interestto researchers. In addition, workload levels and competi-tion might be higher for larger companies, thus providingan additional potential negative impact on response rates.As Table 2 shows, subsidiaries from MNCs that are noton the Global Fortune 500 list are significantly morelikely to respond than subsidiaries from MNCs that areranked on this list, thus confirming our proposition. Theaverage response rate for the former is 27%, while for thelatter it is only 18%. Concerning subsidiary size, respon-dents do on average head smaller subsidiaries than nonre-spondents, thus confirming our proposition.

A final reason for nonresponse might be the sensitivityof the study’s subject. A questionnaire dealing with con-trol mechanisms applied by headquarters towards theirsubsidiaries could make some subsidiary managers hesi-tant to respond, because of the implicit power element in-volved in the subject. This hesitation is likely to be stron-ger for potential respondents coming from countries thatscore high on Hofstede’s power distance index. Wetherefore assume that for nonrespondents the averagepower distance score will be higher than for respondents.Table 2 shows this is indeed the case: on average respon-dents have a significantly lower power distance scorethan nonrespondents.

Overall, the results confirm our propositions as is sum-marized in Figure 1. Respondents are geographically and

culturally closer to the Netherlands, are more internation-ally oriented, work in smaller subsidiaries and in compa-nies not listed on the Global Fortune 500 and come fromcountries with a lower level of power distance. In addi-tion, there is some indication that English language ca-pacity might be a factor influencing response rates aswell. However, since most previous studies focused onAmerican or Japanese companies only, our results mightbe biased by the large proportion of European companiesin our sample. We therefore split the sample in Europeanand non-European MNCs and performed the same tests.Because of the smaller sample sizes, results are generallyless significant and most variables are indeed more sig-nificant for European MNCs than for American/JapaneseMNCs. For many variables, however, our tests indicatesignificant differences for both European and American/Japanese MNCs. The level of foreign sales as a measureof international orientation does not differ significant be-tween respondents and nonrespondents for American/Japanese MNCs, however. In addition, the two measuresof “questionnaire frequency” do not differ significantlybetween respondents and nonrespondents in American/Japanese MNCs. All results are in the expected direction,however.

As can be seen in Table 1, managing directors fromLatin American subsidiaries had very low response rates.One very mundane reason for this lower response ratemight be a lower reliability of postal services in thesecountries. Since these countries are culturally and geo-graphically distant from the Netherlands, score low oninternational orientation and high on power distance, ourresults with regard to these variables might be caused bythe underlying variable: reliability in postal services. Toinvestigate this possibility, we ran the same tests exclud-ing Latin American subsidiaries. As Table 2 shows, how-ever, differences are just as significant as before.

Relatedly, very low response rates are found in South-east Asian countries. Even domestic studies in thesecountries usually generate low response rates. Ng andChui [57] report an 11% response rate in Hong Kong,while Chew and Teo [58] and Shaw et al. [59] achieved

”Questionnaire fatigue” negatively

influences response rates.

250

14% and 15%, respectively, for Singapore. Wang, Wee,and Koh [60] mention a typical response rate of 10–15%for Singapore (and China). Singapadaki, Vitell, andLeelakulthanik [61] realized a 16.3% response rate inThailand and indicate this is high compared with otherstudies in the same country. Mirza, Bartels, and Hiley[62] had a 10% response rate for Taiwanese MNCs(compared with 18% and 28%, respectively, for Ameri-can and European MNCs and 44% for Japanese MNCs).Informal communications with local researchers sug-gested a hectic business life, a distrust to mail surveys ingeneral, and a fear of competitive intelligence under theguise of academic research as major reasons for this lowresponse rate in Southeast Asian countries. A low re-sponse rate is also found for American subsidiaries. Thismeans that there are very few non-European countrieswith a high response rate. The fact whether subsidiaries

are located outside or inside Europe might consequentlyexplain much of the differences in response rates. Wetherefore reran the tests including only European subsid-iaries. As we can see in Table 2, however, all variablesmaintain their significant explanatory power. We cantherefore conclude that the variables discussed aboveseem to be able to differentiate between respondents andnonrespondents in a variety of samples.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Our results show that, when compared with nonre-spondents, respondents are geographically and culturallycloser to the Netherlands, are more internationally ori-ented, work in smaller subsidiaries and in companies notlisted on the Global Fortune 500 and come from coun-

FIGURE 1. Overview of factors influencing mail survey response rate.

251

tries with a lower level of power distance. In addition,there is some indication that English language capacitymight be a factor influencing response rates as well.Based on these results, we can make various recommen-dations for improving response rates in cross-nationalmail surveys.

To overcome cultural and geographical distance, re-searchers might consider mailing questionnaires from anumber of different countries, choosing key locations onthe different continents. In order to do so, it would proba-bly necessary to find university partners in the countrieschosen. Having local partners could also alleviate a sec-ond problem that might be associated with cultural dis-tance: the suitability of incentives. A lower level of trustand comfort with a culturally distant researcher might notbe the only reason for the fact that in our survey fewer re-sponses were received from culturally distant countries.Lower response rates might also be caused by an adverseresponse to incentives that were designed by a researcherwith a particular cultural programming (Dutch andNorthern European). The photograph clearly identifiedthe researcher as female. Scandinavian respondentsmight react more favorably to this than Austrian or Japa-nese respondents. The tea bag incentive might also nothave appealed equally to all nationalities. A colleaguefrom Hong Kong suggested that Chinese addresseeswould perhaps not have returned the questionnaire, be-cause they did not want the researcher to think they sim-ply responded for the tea. She recommended not includ-ing any incentives at all for Chinese respondents. Thissuggestion is supported by Keown’s study in which re-sponse rates for Hong Kong dropped to zero when a dol-lar incentive was included. Another colleague suggestedthat the tea bag incentive would never have worked inSaudi Arabia, since respondents would take it seriouslyand consider it too meager a compensation for filling outthe questionnaire, instead of taking it as the little joke forwhich is was intended. An example of two opposite, butequally negative responses to the same incentive! Al-baum, Evangelista, and Medina [63] showed that the rea-

sons for responding to surveys might differ betweenNorth American, European, and Asia-Pacific countries.Consequently, the incentives used might have to be dif-ferentiated between countries as well. Discussing poten-tial incentives with foreign partners might prevent costlymistakes and might result in a motivated choice for dif-ferent incentives for different cultures. Foreign partnersmight also be able to give advice on the suitability of us-ing mail surveys at all. As discussed above, mail surveysgenerate very low response rates in Southeast Asiancountries. A study that used hand-delivered question-naires in Hong Kong [64] realized an 80% response rate,though admittedly for a combination of business, publicservice, and university respondents. A similar responserate was realized by using the same method in Saudi Ara-bia [65]. If a reasonable number of respondents are re-quired for these countries, it might be better to select asmaller sample and concentrate all efforts on getting ahigh response rate from this sample. So cultural sensitiv-ity is not only vital in the area of (human resource) man-agement, strategy, organizational behavior, and market-ing as claimed by authors such as Adler [66], Francescoand Gold [67], Hofstede [56], Schneider and Barsoux[68], Trompenaars [69], and Usinier [70] but is also in-dispensable when doing international research.

Our results also suggest that respondents that comefrom highly internationalized countries and work for highlyinternational companies might be more likely to respondto cross-national mail surveys. If it does not interferewith the researcher’s other objectives, sampling mighttake this aspect into account. Of course, it might intro-duce a bias in the results, so that they cannot be general-ized to the population of MNCs as a whole. On the otherhand, higher response rates might at least facilitate gener-alization to the group of highly internationalized MNCs.

English language capability might have been a prob-lem for some of our potential respondents. We wouldtherefore suggest that even for surveys in MNCs, ques-tionnaires should be translated for some countries. Itwould not seem necessary to translate questionnaires for,

Use foreign partners to assess the suitability of mail surveys.

252

for example, the Scandinavian countries or the Nether-lands, but translation into Spanish might have increasedour response rates for the four Spanish speaking coun-tries. Also, even if the respondent is able to answer anEnglish language questionnaire, the fact that the re-searcher took the trouble to translate the questionnaireinto his/her own language might increase the respon-dent’s feeling that his/her reply is important to the re-searcher and hence increase response rates.

Our results offer a clear indication that a high inci-dence of questionnaires reduces the chances of response.If this does not interfere with the researcher’s other ob-jectives, sampling MNCs that do not occur on the For-tune 500 list, might improve response rates. Please notethat we are not necessarily talking about small compa-nies. The average sales figure for non-Fortune 500 com-panies in our sample was $3,677.6 million, while the av-erage number of employees for this group still lies above16,000. If research objectives necessitate a focus onlarger MNCs, due attention to the other factors men-tioned in this article might alleviate the response ratesproblem to some extent. However, since more and morelarge MNCs seem to have a company policy not to coop-erate in mail surveys, a more qualitative research ap-proach focusing on a few large MNCs that are willing tocollaborate might become a more feasible option. Relat-edly, in many countries that showed a high response ratein our survey, case studies and interviews are more com-mon than in for instance the U.S. [71]. In addition, thesmaller European countries are less likely to be includedinto a research design that selects just two or three Euro-pean countries. In that case, the U.K., France, and Ger-many are usually the preferred candidates. Therefore, toincrease response rates researchers might do well to fo-cus on less obvious companies and countries.

Finally, in our study, response rates were negativelyrelated to power distance as a cultural dimension. In gen-eral, researchers should carefully investigate whetherparticular issues are sensitive in certain cultures, so thateither questionnaires might be adapted or—if feasible in

the sampling frame—other countries are included in theresearch design.

Our study is the first to discuss response rates to indus-trial mail surveys for more than a couple of countries andwe have been able to offer some tentative suggestions toimprove response rates. More research into cross-na-tional industrial mail surveys is needed, however, beforewe can claim any response effects with certainty. In par-ticular, our knowledge would benefit from more cross-national mail survey research originating from countriesother than the U.S, since our study shows that some re-sults from American studies might not apply universally.Research in this area would already benefit greatly if twovery simple recommendations would be followed. First,researchers should explicitly state the country fromwhich the questionnaires were mailed and the coun-try(ies) the questionnaires were mailed to. Although thismight seem a superfluous recommendation, we encoun-tered quite a number of (American) articles that men-tioned neither. Second, response rates should be men-tioned in each publication and if questionnaires havebeen mailed to more than one country, response ratesshould be calculated and reported for each of these coun-tries. If these simple recommendations are followed, ourknowledge about response rates in cross-national mailsurveys might increase even by studies that do not specif-ically focus on this topic.

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