Abstract Much recent attention has been focused on the market for CPA-firm services. This paper attempts to provide new evidence regarding the conditions of demand in the market for audit services. A questionnaire was distributed to chief financial officers of all SEC corporations which had switched auditors between 1/1/76 and 9130/77. Using semantic-differential ratings of CPA-firm traits and a nonparametric procedure, the significance of certain CPA-firm attributes was determined for various sample stratifications. The overwhelming result is that perceived changes in the relative levels of fees and working relationships appear as the two variables most highly associated with auditor changes. However, other variables are found to be significant within certain comparison environments. Implications of the results for the formulation of CPA-firm marketing strategies are considered in the final section of the paper.
Eichenseher et al. (Tue,) studied this question.