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> E-mail communication frequency presented a very different picture. Frequency was much higher in the small cultural distance context than in the large cultural distance context. Over 23% of US exporters initiated e-mail communication with small cultural distance foreign distributors very frequently, but less than 6% did so with their large cultural distance counterparts. In addition, 41.2% of small cultural distance foreign distributors initiated e-mail contact at the very frequently level as opposed to only 17.1% of large cultural distance distributors doing so. This seemingly opposite result for e-mail compared with the findings for communication frequency via fax and telephone probably reflects the nature of e-mail as an inherently LC mode 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, email is apparently not viewed as an effective medium for augmenting the flow of communication in HC international marketing channels.

Written communication and cultural distance

Written letters were not used very frequently by US exports or their foreign distributors, regardless of the cultural distance separating the two parties. Written letters appear to be somewhat obsolete when compared with the other modes 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 initiate 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 foreign distributors 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 letters 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 exporter counterparts. This is consistent with the expectations 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.

Discussion and conclusions

Much of the promise of B2B e-commerce on a global scale is dependent upon the efficiency that can theoretically be gained by electronically linked channel participants. Thus, instead of intensive communications between people at all levels of the marketing channel contacting each other to make sure that the right products are moving through international channels at the right place and time, Internet based e-commerce would replace all of th本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。