Marketing Accounting Services in the U.S. and Norway

Abstract

This study compares the general perceptions of marketing and the marketing experiences and training by accountants in the United States and Norway. The results of this study indicate there are differences in perceptions of marketing held by accountants in the U.S. and Norway and in their marketing practices. Accountants in the U.S. held stronger opinions on the importance of marketing accounting services, whereas accountants in Norway believed more strongly that reputation for quality work was more important than marketing. Over two-thirds of Norway accountants reported they did not use marketing concepts in their practice while over half of U.S. accountants indicated they did. A majority of Norway accountants indicated they did not need marketing because their clients come to them when they need their services. These findings demonstrate the importance of being cognizant of the differences in marketing professional services as accountants expand their understanding of global business and accounting practices.     

Firm and Industry Effects of Advertising Accountancy Services

This article takes up the theme of the growing importance of the need to market financial and professional services by an examination of the case of accountancy services. Recent relaxations on the advertising of accountancy service call for an examitration of the appropriate marketing strategy for accounting firms. Discussion in the article indicates that firm size will have an important influence on the appropriateness of advertising and the form that it fakes. Advertising should form part of an integrated marketing strategy and not be seduced by the relaxation of the controls into focusing attention solely on this one aspect of marketing. As regards industry effects, advertising may be seen to reinforce concentration in the provision of both audit and particrtlarly non-audit services. There are benefits to smaller firms, however, through the use of advertising to emphasise specialist skills. In terms of conduct, advertising may help build up a barrier to entry into the provision of certain services, but is unlikely to replace price competition for the capture of audit clients as a key to the provision of non-audit services.     

If the Supplier's Human Capital Walks Away,Where Would the Customer Go?

Purpose: Professional service firms' clients often develop stronger attachments to their key contact employee than to the service firm. Since professionals are highly mobile, buyers of professional business services constantly have to decide whether to follow their key contact employee or remain with their incumbent firm, while service firms face the threat of losing customers if the employee leaves. This study examines how the key contact employee's human capital, the social capital between the contact employee and the client, and the service company's structural capital affect the decision whether to follow the key contact employee to another professional service firm.

Methodology/approach: The model is tested on a sample of 120 organizational buyers of advertising services by using partial last squares, a structural equation modelling technique.

Findings: Professional service firms' investments in company-specific structural capital create a deterrent for clients to follow the contact employee, because remaining with the service firm will increase clients' return on the service providers' structural capital. Furthermore, higher levels of structural capital reduce the value of the contact employee's investments in human capital should the employee leave. Conversely, human capital creates motivation to follow the contact employee, while social capital only provides value in combination with human capital.

Research implications: This study employs concepts developed in economics and economic sociology rather than relationship marketing variables to examine attachments to individual professional service providers and to professional service firms.

Practical implications: The findings underline the importance of competence, both at the company and individual level, for retaining clients of professional services. These results contrast previous studies emphasizing close interpersonal relationships and service firms' relationship-building activities.

Originality/value/contribution: Human, social, and structural capital provide value to clients and therefore apply well to professional services. Hence, these variables provide alternative explanations to service firms' client retention or desertion than traditional relationship marketing variables do. The findings add to our understanding of service provider–client relationships in professional services and knowledge intensive firms.     

Professional Tax Service Marketing from a Consumer Buyer Behavior Perspective

Professional services marketing such as accounting and legal services are often received as less smhisticated than product marketing. The prime message promulgated from existing research has often focused on the need for professional service firms to establish formal marketing technique; This paper investigates professional services marketing of tax services from a consumer behavior perspective and the implications of developing a marketing plan. Clearly, professional service providers are operating in a different consumer environment and the marketing implications are significantly different from product marketing.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Pricing of Professional Services (As Applied to Public Accounting)

Recently there has been escalating interest and attention focused on services marketing in marketing literature. Professionals, in particular, face additional marketing challenges because they have both an increased need and an increased ability to market their services. Yet, the pricing of professional services as an area of investigation in marketing has not been adequately researched. This paper examines the pricing issue in the context of public accounting services. The empirical investigation utilizes a multivariate approach to describe and quantify the fee structure of public accounting services. Empirical findings and then managerial implications are discussed.     

A Generalized Model of the Utilization of Professional Services

The determinants of the utilization of professional services has been widely studied in the case of the Andersen-Newman (1973) framework. It seems likely that this framework which includes predisposing, enabling and illness level factors as leading to health services utilization might be usefully extended to the analysis of all professional service usage will illness level changing to professional service need level. This paper adapts the P Andersen-Newman framework to all professiona services by reformulating the framework and adds a strategic marketing approach in discussing its application.     

A Relationship Marketing Perspective for Direct Marketing in the Legal Services Industry

ABSTRACT

The concepts of relationship marketing art: merged with concepts from direct marketing to provide an integrated view of direct marketing. This combined literature is then applied to the specific case of legal services marketing. It appears that the combined literature can he usefully applied to professional services, in general, and holds promise for strengthening marketing efforts in this area.     

Exploring Relationship Management in Professional Services: A Study of Management Consultancy

This paper examines relationship management within management consultancy. This is an industry that has attracted little attention from researchers into professional services, and represents a significant gap in the marketing literature on relationship management. However, management consultancy is an important context for researching relationships as consultancy assignments tend to be project-based and long term in nature and client-consultant interactions are characterised by complexity; value conflicts; asymmetry of information; complex power balances; and differences in perceptions and expectations between clients and consultants. Using a case study approach, consultants' strategic views of relationships; their policies for managing relationships; the opportunity costs of relationship management policies for consultancy firms; as well as clients' views on loyalty and relationship development, are investigated.     

What motivates professional service firm employees to nurture client dialogues?

Dialogues between professionals and their clients are at the core of relationship marketing of professional service firms. To nurture dialogues, professionals need to extend the scope of the dialogue to new issues that impact the client organization's performance. We develop and examine (N?=?431) a model grounded in the theory of planned behavior to highlight factors that impact the willingness of professionals to initiate the extension of client dialogues. Three main results are found. First, affective and instrumental attitudes are distinct and different motivational antecedents that simultaneously impact willingness. Second, affective and instrumental attitude are intermediate psychological considerations shaped by extrinsic rewards, reciprocal relationships, and client relationship quality. Third, organizational pressure operates indirectly by instilling a personal professional norm to extend client dialogues.     

An Econometric Study on Japanese Tourist Arrivals in British Columbia and its Implications

This paper focuses on the marketing of professional services, and on the very specific context of barristers in the British legal professions. We examine the background provided by this sector of professional services, and then present the results of a set of qualitative investigations into the role of marketing as it is perceived by members of this profession, and identify a series of perceived by members of this profession, and identify a series of considering the implications of our findings for how marketing concepts can be productively employed in this area of activity and the needs for conceptual as well as practical extension, but remain largely pessimistic about the current prospects for extending marketing activities into the area of barristers’ marketing.     

Barriers to Marketing Development in the Barristers’ Profession

This paper focuses on the marketing of professional services, and on the very specific context of barristers in the British legal professions. We examine the background provided by this sector of professional services, and then present the results of a set of qualitative investigations into the role of marketing as it is perceived by members of this profession, and identify a series of perceived by members of this profession, and identify a series of considering the implications of our findings for how marketing concepts can be productively employed in this area of activity and the needs for conceptual as well as practical extension, but remain largely pessimistic about the current prospects for extending marketing activities into the area of barristers’ marketing.     

Determinants of Client Expectations for Accounting Services

Abstract

As the market for accounting services becomes more competitive, accounting service providers must strive to continually improve service quality to attract new clients and retain existing clients. Client expectations provide a benchmark that must be met or exceeded for the client to perceive that high quality services have been delivered (Ades 1988; Aquila and Koltin 1992). Based on a review of accounting and service marketing literature, this paper developed a conceptual model that identified potential determinants of client expectations for accounting services. Hypotheses derived from this model were empirically tested using LISREL on survey data from 196 households.

The results of our analysis indicated that client satisfaction with prior services, prior service quality, word-of-mouth communication, and price were significantly related to accounting firm image. Firm image, in turn, was significantly related to client expectations for future accounting services. Importantly, several variables from the service marketing literature were not supported with our sample of accounting service clients. Hence, these results identify the critical determinants of client expectations for accounting services, provide insight into the expectation formulation process for accounting service clients, and offer guidance to accounting service providers who may wish to influence clients' expectations.     

Permissive Marketing The Effect of The AIDS Crisis on Marketing Practices and Messages

In 1981, in a Harvard Business Review feature, we described a marketing condition which we called "unmentionability" and, through a series of case studies, showed how it could frustrate the marketing of a wide range of products and services, despite the fact that many of them need to be actively marketed. AIDS and the massive anti-AIDS promotional campaigns that it spawned have dramaticaly accelerated the pace of change and created a new environment in which products, services, concepts and ideas that were previously regarded as unmentionable can now be marketed openly and explicitly. The marketing climate has changed profoundly and, although not always for the better, the added freedom and punch that the AIDS campaigns have engendered in the marketing world, have been eagerly accepted by those who feel it can enhance their marketing programmes.     

Effective Nonverbal Communication Techniques

Developing effective marketing strategies for profes- sional service firms presents many unique challen es and is an im- portant area of practice development that many &ns often wer- look. Professional service firms ossess very distinctive P characteristics which differentiate them rom other service firms and require specialized marketing strategies. The purpose of this article is to assist practitioners in their efforts to develop promotional strat- egies which will enhance their firm's professional image and in- crease the firm's ability to engage new clients. These strategies arc aimed specifically at certified public accountants, lawyers, archi- tects, and other professionals.     

Marketing psychological services: Using client problem and solution perceptions to design help offering promotional appeals

This article presents a model for segmenting potential clients for behaviorally related services such as psychotherapy, related mental health services, and medical conditions requiring significant behavioral action and compliance such as hypertension and diabetes. The model groups potential clients and caregivers as having beliefs about whether clients are responsible for their problems and responsible for their problem's solutions. Different clients' beliefs are shown to result in different social marketing promotional strategies whose goal is to foster timely and appropriate help seeking. The model is used to show the potential interactions between problem and solution perceptions and the different appeal strategies of problem or solution focus; fear, the credentials of the caregivers; and the use of modeling, shaping, and behaviorally explicit directions. Different appeals' ability to enhance or thwart help seeking is discussed. Implications for future research are given. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Establishing a system for innovation in a professional services firm

Professional service firms are facing new competitive challenges in a global market with more value-focused clients, service commoditization, regulatory changes, and new Internet-enabled business models. They increasingly need to improve competitiveness through sustained innovation of the value they provide and the efficiency with which they provide it. But how can firms establish an effective and sustainable innovation system? This Executive Digest shares a best practice model for innovation based on academic research and honed by a decade of practical experience in application across professional service firms in consulting projects. This work covers how to develop innovation strategies by establishing processes and organization to support innovation, providing innovation training, developing new services, and re-engineering existing services. The author, Alastair Ross, details the practices required and shares some of the challenges encountered in realizing them. This article draws heavily on his latest book, Innovating professional services: Transforming value and efficiency.     

Using consumer perceptions to operationalize the service construct: Exploratory research in theory extension and validation

Despite the ascendancy of services marketing as a topic of interest, an absence of empirical validation measures and well-grounded research techniques in the area is evident. This article explores the need for marketing to develop an approach by which services marketing empirical research can be advanced. A methodology is proposed that operationalizes the service construct by identifying consumer perceptions of goods and services, and which provides a practical basis for conducting empirical research. Empirical evidence is offered that suggests strong reliability and face validity in support of this approach. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Global Perceptions of Online Advertising

ABSTRACT

The marketing of professional services is different from marketing in other areas. Indeed, several “distinctive problems” of marketing professional services have been identified. In order to obtain evidence as to whether these “problems” apply to public accounting services and if current accounting graduates understand them, two surveys were conducted of chairpersons of accounting and marketing departments at AACSB accredited schools of business. The results indicate that respondents from both groups of chairs believe that the majority of the “problems” are concerns for the public accounting profession and that current accounting graduates should understand them. However, both groups appeared neutral as to whether current accounting graduates are exposed to many of these “distinctive problems.” It is difficult for students to understand and be prepared to deal with the issues, if they have not been exposed to them.     

Measuring the Perceived Quality of Professional Business Services

Professional firms serving business clients are recognizing the need for improved quality services. Unfortunately, measures of professional service quality have proven difficult to develop. This paper reports on the use of SERVQUAL, an instrument commonly used to assess consumer perceptions of service quality. This instrument was employed with a sample of business owners who were asked to rate the quality of service received from their accounting firm. Although several dimensions of the scale proved useful, additional quality related factors emerged from the analysis.