STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 31, 2000--

        Survey Identifies Subtle Differences in Communication
          Habits in North America, United Kingdom, France and
            Germany that Can Derail Business Understanding

While the number of communications tools available to and used by office workers has increased globally, preferences for specific tools and messaging protocols varies considerably between nations in North America and Europe, according to research findings released by Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI) today. The findings are a result of Pitney Bowes' fourth annual study on messaging practices in the 21st century workplace, entitled "Messaging for Innovation: Building the Innovation Infrastructure Through Messaging Practices."

"Workers around the world choose from all available communications tools, such as phone, fax, e-mail and sticky notes, to build highly personalized and idiosyncratic messaging strategies," said Meredith Fischer, co-author of the study and vice president, Pitney Bowes Inc. "As we examined trend data on a per-country basis, however, certain very marked cultural tendencies and preferences emerged. North American workers prefer tools such as voicemail or e-mail to communicate with colleagues to advance projects and share critical information even when people are spread across time zones. Workers in the European countries we surveyed work, to varying degrees, in a markedly different style. Respondents find long, content filled voicemails irritating and somewhat of a personal imposition. Real-time communication is preferred for sharing critical information, and the `time-delayed' tools are used more to schedule or request such real-time conversations. Knowledge of such preferences is essential for workers to communicate effectively across national borders in the New Economy."

An Emerging North American Style

Although Canadian office workers process fewer messages per day than their American counterparts, use of e-mail across Canada is accelerating rapidly to approach parity with American e-mail use. Pitney Bowes' messaging study reveals that 44 percent of typical Canadian workers have started to use e-mail in the past year. Furthermore, Canadian workers show an 18 percent increase in their use of the Internet over the past year. Similarly, both Canadians and Americans show lower cellular phone usage than their European counterparts. This can be attributed to both a still-developing North American cellular phone infrastructure as well as the continent's geographic spread and resulting division into multiple time zones --creating a need for time-delay tools such as e-mail and voicemail and contributing to the historically lower use of real-time voice tools like cellular phones. "Adoption of e-mail and the Internet as messaging tools is occurring more quickly in Canada than it did in the United States," said Fischer. American and Canadian messaging practices more closely resemble each other than do practices in any other two nations surveyed. Americans can, with some degree of confidence, use the same tools and messaging strategies for communicating with Canadians, as they would use for communicating with their U.S. colleagues and contacts.

United Kingdom

Office workers in the United Kingdom reported the greatest increase in the total number of messages received between 1999 and 2000: from 171 to 191 per day. The United Kingdom also experienced the highest increase in Internet use of any nation surveyed, from 36 percent using the Internet every day or several times a week in 1999 to 61 percent in the year 2000 -- marking a 25 percent increase. Despite this growth, the telephone remains a favored messaging tool in the United Kingdom: over 50 percent of the total messages received per day by U.K. office workers are via the telephone. "Despite the shift towards electronic communications, the telephone, either wired or cellular, is still the communication tool of choice in the United Kingdom. British phone use is more frequent than in any other nation we surveyed, signaling the British worker's affinity for real time voice communication," stated Fischer.

Germany

Germans surveyed reported a marked preference, like their French counterparts, for traditional paper-based tools such as postal mail and inter-office mail. Germans report higher message volumes through those two channels than do workers in any other nation surveyed. In numbers slightly ahead of other European workers and significantly ahead of North Americans, Germans use the fax machine for messaging: 93 percent of German office workers use fax machines everyday or several times a week. In contrast, the research found that many Germans do not use voicemail as a means of communicating -- only 35 percent of Germans use voicemail everyday or several times a day, by far the lowest rate reported for this particular tool among the nations surveyed. "Germany shares with France a marked preference for traditional, paper-based tools and for fax messaging," said Fischer. "European countries on the whole demonstrate a different usage pattern for voicemail, when contrasted to North American workers. We were surprised, however, by the Germans' marked lack of preference for this particular technology. In Germany, as in other European countries, voicemail seems to be perceived as an effective means of saying `call me back,' but not as a means of sharing critical or potentially sensitive information, or of closing a communications loop."

France

French office workers receive, on average, 11 cellular phone messages per day, more than workers in the United States, Canada, Germany or the United Kingdom. As in Germany, paper-based messaging tools in France account for a greater percentage of total messages sent and received in a typical day than in the United Kingdom or North America. The average French worker sends or receives 23 postal mail messages per day. The Pitney Bowes study also reveals that the French engage in fewer face-to-face interactions than do workers in any other surveyed nation: the average French worker conducts only three face-to-face interactions in a typical workweek. "While traditional messaging tools still dominate the French business climate, it will be interesting to track the effects of e-mail and Internet use year-to-year as these tools become more accepted as standards in France," stated Fischer. Sensitivity to cultural differences in messaging practices will promote effective global business practices.

About the Study

"Messaging for Innovation: Building the Innovation Infrastructure Through Messaging Practices" builds on four years of trend data compiled and examined by Pitney Bowes. This is the first and only study of its kind to examine the complete desktop messaging environment of knowledge workers -- how they use messaging tools to impact their productivity and organizational value. The fourth in a series of studies on Managing Communication in the 21st Century Workplace, the 2000 study was commissioned in partnership with The Institute for the Future -- an independent, nonprofit research firm --and drew on ethnographic interviews or observational interviews, as well as extensive telephone surveys. The research was conducted between January and March 2000 and consisted of interviews with workers at all organizational levels in small, medium, large and Fortune 1000 companies in Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and United States.

For more than 30 years, the Institute for the Future, based in Silicon Valley, California, has forecasted critical technological, demographic and business trends to help clients plan successfully for their future, including government groups, nonprofit organizations and major corporations throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

Pitney Bowes Inc. is a $4.4 billion global provider of informed mail and messaging management. It serves 118 countries through dealer and direct operations. For more information about the company, visit www.pitneybowes.com.

CONTACT: Cunningham Communication, Inc.

             Karen Fadden, (617) 494-8202
             kfadden@cunningham.com
                or
             Pitney Bowes
             Sheryl Battles, (203) 351-6808
             battlesh@pb.com