Does the name of the sender affect industrial mail response

Abstract Recognizing the rapidly changing composition of the U.S. industrial workforce, this study addresses the challenging problem of obtaining a viable mail response rate from an industrial market sampling frame. Specifically, the effects of manipulating only the name of the sender is investigated. A total of 800 small- and medium-sized southwestern business firms with contact persons having domestic (i.e., American-Christian)-sounding names were randomly and equally allocated among four different senders, all belonging to a southwest state university. The survey questionnaire dealt with the effects of free-trade pacts on small- and medium-sized businesses. Results indicate that senders with American-Christian-sounding names generate a higher response rate than those with foreign-non-Christian-sounding names. The potential implications of these results to industrial marketers are discussed.