A Marketing Approach To Service Quality In Accounting: A Case Study

Abstract

Accounting firms operate in a competitive marketplace, consequently the quality imperatives and philosophies that currently apply to manufacturing are also relevant to service industries like professional accounting services.  This begs the question of how quality should be defined and what pedagogy should be used for achieving the goal of continuous quality improvement.  The service quality concepts are of particular relevance to management accounting due to its involvement in quality assurance in manufacturing.  This paper looks at some of the research and methodologies developed by Marketing Science that takes a customer perceptive in defining and measuring service quality, and applies one such methodology, SERVPERF, to a firm in the Accounting and Management Consulting industry.  In this study, data representing customer service quality (performance) perceptions and satisfaction with the services provided by the firm has been used to identify areas needing improvement. The study also identifies those areas in which the firm is effective in providing services. The results of this analysis appear to provide some support for conceptualising and measuring service quality as an attitude as suggested by Cronin and Taylor (1992).