.findings
In order to provide the highest level of sensitivity possible for measuring respondents perception of how frequently they needed to communicate due to cultural distance only the very frequently category is reported here by focusing on the exporters responses at this very high level of communication frequency the chance of including what might be considerd normal every day communication between the us exporters and their foreign distributors in minimized
The following sections report the finding for communication via fax telephone e-mail and written letters graphs of the response at the very frequent level are presented in figs 1-4 fig I shows fax commication fig2 phone communication fig3 e-mail communication fig4 written communication
5.1 fax communication and cultural distance
Hyeothesis I was supported when communicating with their foreign distributors us exporters were much more
Likely to report both initiating and receiving communication via fax at the very frequent level when the cultural distance between them and their foreign distributor was large than when it was small specifically when the culturel distance was large 77.1% of the us exporters initiated fax communication with their foreign distributors intiated fax communication with the us exports very frequenlty the corresponding percentage for fax communication with their small cultural distance foreign distributors were 29.4% and 41.2% respectively clearly there was a grat deal more faxing back and forth with the foreign distributor when that foreign distributor was from a culturally distant country
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 pooosed to only 17.1% of large cultural distance distributors doing so this seemingly poosite 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 mide 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.
5.4 written communication and cultural distance
Hypothesis 4 was not supported written letters were not used very frequently by us exports or their foreign distributors regardless of the cultural distance reparating the two parties written letters appear to be somewhat obsolete when compared with the other moodes of communication only 5.7% of us exporters very frequently initiated communication with their culturally distant foreign distributors and only 5.9% with their culturally close foreign distributors foreign distributors likewise did not initate written communication very frequently with the us exporters however the percentage initiating written communication from culturally close nations was almost double that of those from culturally distant nations Almost 12% of forign distrinutors from nations with a small cultural distance from the us initiated written communication with their us exporters while 5.7% from large cultural distance nations did so Therefore while the numbers of foreign distributors choosing written letter as a communication mode very frequently was not high when the parties involved were both from LC cultures they engaged in written communication almost twice as often as HC distributors did with their culturally distant Lc US exports of LC cultures that encode more of the meaning of their communication in the actual words of a message than do people from HC cultures