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In a recent article on conducting international marketing research in the twentyfirst century (Craig & Douglas 2001), the application of new (electronic) technology for data collection was encouraged. Email and web-based data collection methods are attractive to researchers in international marketing because of low costs and fast response rates. Yet the conventional wisdom is that, as some people still do not have access to email and the Internet, such datacollection techniques may often result in a sample of respondents that is not representative of the desired population. In this article we evaluate multimode strategies of data collection that include web-based, email and postal methods as a means for the international marketing researcher to obtain survey data from a representative sample. An example is given of a multimode strategy applied to the collection of survey data from a sample of respondents across 100 countries.
Introduction
The self-completed postal or mail survey is a recognised form of data collection in marketing research (Dillman 1978). There are welldocumented practical problems with this form of data collection: poor response rates, slow response, and manual transcription of data from a hard copy questionnaire to an appropriate statistical analysis tool. Nonresponse and data entry errors may result. Consequently, research into online data collection methods increased significantly during the late 1990s. This was preceded by (1) a growing number of Internet and email users, which started to mirror the general population in some countries (Kehoe et aL 1998), and (2) various computer-assisted data collection techniques, such as Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) and Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI). Investigation into the validity of online data collection has been grounded mainly in comparisons between online surveys and mail surveys (Schaefer & Dillman 1998; Stanton 1998; Sheehan & Macmillan 1999). The need for mastering new tools, incorporating the latest technology in data collection, has been identified by Craig and Douglas (2001). They advise that international marketing researchers will need to broaden their capabilities in order to design, implement and interpret research in the twenty-first century.
However, a sample of respondents with Internet/email access may not be representative of certain populations. To overcome this problem, Schaefer and Dillman (1998) suggested a multimode strategy of data collection, i.e. approaching them via email and by post/mail. This...