Marketing clients and their advertising agencies: The antecedents and consequences of client role ambiguity in complex service production

Marketing client representatives have important work roles to perform in the production of the advertising agency service. Because research on the client/ad agency relationship suggests agencies may have difficulty satisfying their clients because of inadequate or unpredictable client role performance, the complex nature of the client's role in the co-production of the service bears investigation. In this dissertation, (a) the client/ad agency literature is reviewed, (b) an emerging line of theory development focusing on service organization/client relationships is presented, (c) the likely antecedents and consequences of client representative role ambiguity/clarity are discussed, and (d) the findings of a study exploring the relationships among client representative role ambiguity and antecedent and consequent variables are presented.;The population of interest in this study consists of marketing and advertising managers and executives performing the role of "client representative in client/ad agency relationships. Self-administered mail survey questionnaires were used to gather data from a sample of 300 respondents; the survey achieved a 49.3% response rate.;Descriptively, the findings of this research indicate that marketing client representatives are quite satisfied with their ad agencies in the areas of performance and personal relationships. The data also indicate respondents experience relatively low levels of conflict and tension/anxiety resulting from the relationship.;The tests of the hypotheses indicate support for six of the seven proposed hypotheses. Role ambiguity/clarity was found to be significantly correlated with two antecedents: length of relationship and client tenure. The constructs were also significantly correlated with four consequences: satisfaction-relationship, satisfaction-performance, conflict, and tension/anxiety. The study also provides a descriptive analysis of the adoption and use of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) by the respondents. In addition to providing additional empirical evidence concerning multiple types or facets of IMC, the findings suggest that more than one-half of all respondents believe they are using the IMC approach. Correlational analysis indicates that marketers who are using the IMC approach experience significantly greater satisfaction with their advertising agencies. Implications of the results of the findings are provided and recommendations suggested for future research.