5.2 telephone communication and cultural distance
Hypothesis 2 was supported when examining phone communication similar results were observed as shown in fig 2 40% of the us exporters initisted phone communication with their foreign distributors from culturally distant countries very frequently while their foreign distributors from culturlly distant countries initiated communication by phone 34.4% of the time very frequently 11.8% of the time and those foreign distributors initiated phone communication very frequently only 17.6% of the time once again us exporters engaged in very frequent communication back and forth with culturally distance foreign distributors much more so than with culturally close foreign distributors
5.3 e-mail communication and cultural distance
Hypotheis 3 was not support e-mail communication frequency presented a very different picture frequency was much higher in the small cultural distance context than on the large cultural distance context over 23% of us exportersa
Initiated e-mail communication with small cultural distance foreign distributors in addition 41.2% of small cultural distance foreign distributors initiated e-mail contact at the very frequently level as poosed to only 17.1% of large cultural distance distributors doing so this seemingly posite result for e-mail compared with the findings for communication frequency iva fax and telephone probably reflects the nature of e-mail as an inherently lc minde of communication the very terse and abbreviated style typical of e-mail communication allows little room for explanation or nuance thus in the case of large cultural distance unlike fax or telephone ea is apparently not viewed as an effective medium for augmenting the flow of communication in hc international marketing channels.