Postal surveys to small manufacturers

Abstract The use of the mail questionnaire as a survey tool has been the subject of many investigations in the United States, where its use on various industrial populations has been studied. However very little has been published either in the U.S. or in the United Kingdom which considers the applicability of response-improvement techniques to a survey of small manufacturing firms. This article discusses our experience and views on the influence of a number of perceived response-improvement techniques—type of postage on the enclosed return envelope, personalization, anonymity, type of questionnaire, and follow-up and its timing after the initial mailing—on a postal survey of small manufacturing companies in the United Kingdom, as part of a larger project on small company control. The findings are compared with Jobber's recommendations for mail survey of industrial populations.