Voice Mail Versus Conventional Channels: A Cost Minimization Analysis of Individuals' Preferences

Abstract

Professional, technical, and administrative workers read a vignette describing a communication need and expressed a preference for the channel they would use to initiate a message. We manipulated such variables as message complexity and need for documentation. Results support eight of ten hypotheses derived from a perspective of cost minimization with exogenous variables accounting for about 21 percent of the variance. Cost minimization can apparently predict individual channel selections and provide a partial basis for managerial decisions about adopting voice mail.