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I am a PhD student from Australia in the discipline of international business. For my data collection, I intend to conduct an online survey among energy-related firms in six countries (Australia, USA, UK, India, China and Sri Lanka). For this, I need to contact managers in production, technology, R&D, and manufacturing divisions of the companies.

Based on my research model the minimum sample size is 356. Considering a low response rate (approximately 10%), I have to contact approximately three thousand firms. So far I am trying to collect this data by accessing specific firm’s websites. This is very time consuming, and in nearly 99% of cases, I could not find the specific email address I am looking for.

My question is with respect to the availability and ability to find these firms and specific contact persons contact details. Are there any websites or firms who could find the specific firms, contact persons (managers in production, etc.) and their specific email addresses?

  • Would it compromise your study to pursue partnerships with these companies to do the research? You would get a much higher response rate if you had management buy-in. – cactus_pardner May 02 '18 at 18:20
  • If you find energy conferences, then you could advertise / promote your survey through such conferences... – Christopher Klaus May 13 '18 at 19:22

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I would guess there is no simple answer.

However, in several countries, there are specialised companies for that. In Switzerland (where I work), it is Schober.ch

Maybe, for getting the companies themselves, try lexisnexis.com ? They have a branch "company research".

Walter Kuhn
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  • Thank you so much for your advice. I am looking into this website to see the possibility of finding the contact details of the firms I am focusing on. I also found https://hunter.io/s helpful in finding internal email addresses. While this does not fully cater to my requirements, I managed to find some contact details of the staff, which is not openly available on their websites. Thanks again for your advice. I do really appreciate it. –  May 02 '18 at 22:52
  • Maybe, in addition, simply use linkedin.com and try to find out the people of interest there –  May 03 '18 at 10:47