外文翻译--发展会计师事务所的营销理念

外文翻译

Developing the Marketing Concept in Public Accounting Firms

Material Source:/Author:Tyzoon and Albert

INTRODUCTION

The Metcalf Report of the Senate Subcommittee on Reports, Accounting, and Management has declared that the public accounting profession needs to foster competition. 1 The accounting establishment faces a curious dilemma: aggressive marketing activity is a necessary ingredient in intensified competition, yet this activity is all too often perceived to conflict with professional standards of ethical conduct. To some extent this conflict arises out of a misconception of marketing. The scope of modem marketing stretches far beyond the solicitations and hardsell of the Fuller Brush Salesman or the skillful manipulations described by social critics such as Vance Packard. The purpose of this paper is to develop the relevance of a marketing orientation to firms providing public accounting services. Though the paper focuses on public accountants, the methodology developed here could be extended to the marketing of the other professional services. At a fundamental level, the formulation of marketing strategy consists of four steps. They are:(1) To identify the needs of current and prospective clients for services and information; to identify their current behavior and the problems they encounter.(2) To partition the total market into segments so as to highlight the different needs and problems of various groups.(3) To select one or more of these segments as the target(s) of the firm's business activities.(4) To design and implement client services, including communication programs which convey the benefits these services could provide to prospects in the target markets. The following section reviews existing research on selection of public accounting firms. The next section develops the first two of the above steps. The results of a telephone survey of chief executive officers and chief financial offiers in privately held high technology finns are reported as a case example. In addition, the evolution of a small firm and its accounting needs is presented in a hypothetical example to dramatize the research results. The discussion then turns to the last two of the above four steps. Here the focus broadens from client needs to include an understanding of

the strengths and weaknesses of the CPA firm which is formulating the strategy. The marketing audit is introduced as a vehicle for formulating marketing strategy and evaluating performance. Taylor and Thompson (1962) report on a study of the selection decision for 222 manufacturing firms. The criteria that firms used in selecting a public accounting firm were its reputation, professional standing, competence, national and international coverage, and knowledge of the client firm and its industry. Over 85% of the firms had not changed their CPA firm for more than 10 years because the change would be costly and time-consuming, result in a loss of continuity and, perhaps, be adversely viewed by the business community. Approximately 95% of the firms use their CPA firms for services other than the annual audit. These services include preparation of tax returns, evaluation of acquisition, merger and consolidation prospects, internal cost accounting and development of management information systems and special studies in the areas of financing, pension funds, profit sharing programs, and foreign subsidy organization and operation. About half the firms used their CPA firm as consultants on management problems. Burton and Roberts (1967) studied the firms on the Fortune list of the 500 largest industrial firms. For the period of 1952-1965, only 83 firms showed a change of its CPA firm for reasons other than the merger of the public accounting firm. Of these changes, only five were to a smaller sized CPA firm, 31 were from a small CPA firm to a Big 8 firm, and in 46 cases, the outgoing and incoming CPA firms were of comparable size. The principal reasons for the change were a shuffle in the client firm's management (31 cases), the need for additional services (17 cases), and the need for new financing (9cases). Disputes or dissatisfaction were mentioned in only 11 cases and the fee was an issue in only one of the cases. Beding field and Loed (1974) identified 250 firms registered with the SEC which had changed CPA firms between November, 1971 and February, 1973. They surveyed 141 of these companies and found that the fees of the outgoing firm and dissatisfaction with it were cited in over 40% of the cases. When the change involved movement from a non-national CPA firm to a national CPA firm, there was often pressure to do so from the investment bankers involved in the client company. In a survey of 165 firms which went public in the last quarter of 1969 and the first quarter of 1970, Carpenter and Strawser (1971) found that, in over half the cases the public accounting firm had been changed in the five years prior to going public. This is in contrast to the other studies cited above which found a relatively low incidence of changes in CPA firms. The figure, however, supports our contention that the period of early growth of a company places stress its