Effect Of Relationship Quality On Accounting Firm's Customer Loyalty

With the opening of domestic markets after China's entry into WTO, the intervention of international "big four" has been intensifying the competition in the auditing market and reached an unprecedented fierce state. Supply and demand relationship in audit market has undergone profound changes. The seller's advantage has been gradually lost, and the living environment domestic enterprises facing has become worse. So, how to improve firms' competitiveness is a priority.Traditional research perspective to improve firms' competitiveness is often limited to reputation and brand, human capital and management level, and so on. As the research progressed, some scholars have found the indicators above are not comprehensive, they think that the present study on core competence of China's accounting firms does not well reflect the "relationship capital" which exists in the human capital. Relational capital reflects the relationship between the accounting firms and the customers and the other principals. In many cases, high quality customer relationships may be the sole significant competitive advantages. Core competitiveness of the accounting firms, are not only whether they can provide a more comprehensive range of business, but also whether they have a number of loyal customers, and customer relationship management and maintenance. From the perspective of the firm profitability and future of the sustainability, quality of relationships between firms and their customers is undoubtedly the core elements of relationship capital. Visibly, on the basis of the existing dimension on the core competitiveness, the customer dimension will become one of the core competence of firms in the future."Relationship quality" originated in the theory of relationship markeing, it integrate the theory of transaction cost and Neo-classical economics, using economics, sociology, psychology and other multi-disciplinary knowledge, study the degree of relationship between customers and enterprises meeting the needs of both. Since 1983, the concept of relationship quality have been proposed firstly, the research has lasted for nearly 30 years. The applications of relationship quality has been involved in all kinds of important fields, its definition and dimension are continuously enriched and developed.Custoemr loyalty consists of behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty. There are many factors which impact customer loyalty, on the basis of existing literature, this paper will research the dimensions of auditorial relationship quality and it impacts on customer loyalty, and try to verify it through a questionnaire. In theoretical analysis, the auditorial relationship quality consists of six dimensions which are satisfaction, trust, commitment, communication, independent relations and stable relations, and all dimensions have a positive impact on customer loyalty of accounting firm. Empirical results show that satisfaction, trust and commitment have a significant positive impact on customer's behavioral loyalty of accounting firm, communication, trust and commitment have a significant positive impact on customer's emotional loyalty of accounting firm.While, the dimensions of independent relations and stable relations were not through any significant test. The conclusions of this research verified that the auditorial relationship has positive effect on customer loyalty, which helps the accounting firms to use marketing to strengthen business ties with customers, expand their business, enhance the core competitiveness.