To explore the impact of cultural distance on communication in international marketing channels a study of in foreign countries was undertaken since all of the exporters in the study were Us-based by definition they are all LC however to assess the effect of cultural distance on communication in the exporter distributor marketing channel foeign distributors from a wide variety of countries around the globe were sought a source a source list of us exporters operating throughout the world was obtained from a reputable business directory publisher executives at each export firm were contacted by telephone to request their participation in the study of 250 firns contacted 60 firms
Agreed to participate Approximately 2 week after the initial contact nonrespondents were contacted agin via telephone to encourage their participation six of the returned surveys were discarded due to incompleteness resulting in a 21.6 % respone rate of the 54 cases used for the analyses 35 included foreign distributors from high cultural context countries and 19 were from low culturel context countries contacis included senior managers and other qualified personnel most familiar with their firm's foreign distributors in responding to the questionnaire managers in the export firms were asked to consider the communication that they have with only one foreign distribution partner and to indicate the country of that foreign distributor eighteen nations other than the united states were represented in the study and they included contries on five continents see table
Communication frequency was assessed by asking the export managers to indicate the frequency of their communication with the foreign distributor over a period of 4 weeks they provided information about how frequently they contacted the foreign distributor via telephone fax e-mail and written letters A five-point likert scale ranging from very infrequently to very frequently was contact frequency these repondents also provided information about how frequently they were contacted by the foreign distributor via telephone fax e-mail and written letters using the same five-point likert scale ranging from very infrequently to very frequently
Cultural distance was assessed via hall HC vs lc culturl classification since the us is an lc culture when us exporters interact with foreign distributors from another LC culture they are poerating in a small cultural distance situation on the other hand when LC US exporters interact with foreign distributors from an HC culture they are operating in a large culturl distance situation