Experimental comparison of Web, electronic and mail survey technologies inoperations management

With the growing acceptance of the Web (Internet) and electronic mail, it i s no surprise that researchers are using an increasingly diverse set of sur vey technologies to gather data from managers. However, the effectiveness o f these electronic technologies has not been rigorously assessed, especiall y for gathering data from establishment-level surveys (i.e. firm- or plant- level). To that end, a stratified sample of large and small, service and ma nufacturing firms was constructed, followed by random assignment to one of four survey technologies: mail, fax, PC disk-by-mail and Web-page survey (c ombined with e-mail notification). For each treatment, managers are queried about their use of forecasting characteristics, yielding a sample of 118 f irms. Unfortunately, only a low percentage (34%) of firms and managers assi gned to the Web technology treatment both reported access to e-mail and wer e willing provide their e-mail addresses; they tended to be large firms and from the service sector. Moreover, those that did offer e-mail addresses w ere only about half as likely to respond to the Web-based survey as those t argeted by other survey technologies. However, Web, fax and disk-by-mail te chnologies yielded higher item completion rates than mail. Limited statisti cal evidence indicated that respondents using computer-based survey technol ogies (i.e. Web or disk-by-mail) generally reported forecasting characteris tics that are associated with firms exhibiting best practices. Thus, a mult i-technology survey approach using the Web and fax can yield a strong combi nation of benefits over a traditional mail survey. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scienc e B.V. All rights reserved.