This research used an e-mail from mock Chinese consumers to investigate how Australian educational institutions use e-mail for overseas marketing and customer service. Less than two out of three of the 212 institutions sampled replied to a simple e-mail asking about fees and entry requirements. Even less institutions answered the questions promptly, politely, personally, professionally and promotionally. Despite e-mail's widespread use, these results highlight implementation issues with this new marketing and customer service tool.
The study gives institutions benchmarks and insights for improving e-mail marketing and online customer service. Academically, this paper supports past organisational research that size and industry sector relate to adopting innovations, suggests new metrics for measuring Internet adoption and proposes future research agendas.
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