The conceptual model was tested on a sample of high revenue Hungarian
companies, using mail questionnaires administered to all firms
belonging to the top 10% in terms of sales revenues. The sample was
drawn from the database of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office
(www.ksh.hu); 2500 questionnaires were sent out via mail with an alternative
option to administer the questionnaire online. To improve the
response rate, follow-up phone calls were used to inquire whether the
questionnaire had reached a competent key respondent and to gain information
about the reasons for non-response. A managerial summary
of one of the authors' former research results was offered as a nonmonetary
incentive to all respondents. The data collection resulted in
296 returned questionnaires, representing a response rate of 12%. The
key respondents were Chief Marketing Officers, or—when such a position
did not exist—General Executives in charge of marketing-related
decisions, with a mean of 12.1 years of job-specific experience and
decision-making authority. Table 1 summarizes the profiles of the sample
firms.
A comparison of the sample of responding firms with data from the
Hungarian Central Statistical Office reveals that the sample is fairly representative
of the basic population in terms of the number of employees
and somewhat skewed in terms of industry of operations. The proportion
of “other industries” is relatively high, but respondent anonymity
did not allow for later classification of these companies. In addition, agriculture
and financial services are slightly overrepresented in the sample,
while the processing industry is underrepresented.
Analysis of variance did not indicate significant differences between
the means of the key constructs or the descriptive statistics (number of
employees, industry, major field and business category of operation,
ownership structure) of early and late respondents (Armstrong &