Accounting Firm Brand Index Construct And Its Application

More than three decades since the reform and opening up, along with the sustained and rapid economic growth, China’s CPA profession has made considerable progress, the number and size of the firm has also been rapid growth. With the further opening up of the accounting market, the accelerated process of economic globalization and the accession to the WTO, the competition faced by the CPA profession in China will become more intense. In the fierce market competition environment, the accounting firm’s brand strength has been concerned by more and more experts or scholars. The enhancement of the firm brand strength could enhance social awareness and satisfaction, and the enhancement of social awareness will promote the improvement of the business income, business income can improve generate sufficient investment of resources, adequate investment of resources in order to promote audit to enhance the quality and scale. In addition, the reputations of the brand strength give the motivation and strength of the firm to remain independent so as to achieve the firm’s virtuous circle of development trend. The brand strength of the accounting firm has great significance to increase the volume of business, to enhance bargaining levels and profitability to improve.Because of the particularity of the auditing profession, the market lack of the information on the brand of Certified Public Accountants. Unlike traditional manufacturing or service industries, accounting firms provide professional services to customers, its operational capacity and service levels is inherent, not readily apparent to show to customers and the general. Customers and the general public nor can learned of the firm’s quality of service provided in time. Meanwhile, due to the needs of the auditing profession, independence and quality of practice, to prevent excessive propaganda to mislead the consumer, to exaggerate their own ability level, or unfair competition, China’s compliance with international standards prohibit accounting firms to do any form of advertising. But in the market economy, customer to select accounting firm or the public recognition of the credibility of the disclosure of financial information on the company need to have some knowledge of accounting firms and industry information.In2003, the "21st Century Business Herald," has publicly released the2002accounting firm China Top, Chinese Institute of CPAs considered their single source of data, evaluation methods flaws, cannot be objective, scientific evaluation of the comprehensive strength of the firm, and from2003began to use its advantage of industry information, and each year publicly announced accounting firm Top. Year by year of evaluation to improve, the Top become China’s most authoritative comprehensive strength list of Certified Public Accountants. But I suppose that the evaluation system there are still some defects, can not reflect the brand strength of Certified Public Accountants. Today, the Index has been widely used in socio-economic aspects, such as CPI (consumer price index), PPI (producer price index), PMI(manufacturing purchasing managers index), and a variety of weather index of media, consumer satisfaction index, the financial center index. The index can be intuitive for us to show the overall change trend or an isolated phenomenon, which can be different times of the phenomenon of the level of contrast, can also be a level of comparison of different space phenomena. In index form to reflect the brand strength of Certified Public Accountants, intuitive, simple to reduce the information needs of those affected by the impact of information overload to make biased judgments, users of information on the firm’s brand strength to carry out a comprehensive and systematic evaluation. For the firm itself, customers and the public can play a good role in the transmission of information.The main idea is, Research methods and build on brand evaluation and index in the AICPA accounting firm strength evaluation method for reference, comprehensive analysis of internal and external factors affect the brand strength of Certified Public Accountants, the scientific establishment of Certified Public Accountants brand index evaluation system. Documentary research and efficacy coefficient method for the basic index score of the evaluation system, the use of expert judgment method (Delphi method) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the weight of indexes of all levels, build brand index model of Certified Public Accountants, and finally the model top15accounting firms in Sichuan Province, comprehensive evaluation before use to validate the science and applicability of the model.The full text is divided into six chapters, the main content of each chapter are described below:1, Introduction. This chapter describes the background, meaning and purpose, related literature review, the main content of this paper, innovation of this paper.2, The basic theory of accounting firm. This chapter begins in the AICPA accounting firm strength evaluation method to evaluate brand index for this article accounting firm to establish a theory pave the way. Then defines the definition of the brand index and the accounting firm brand index, and analyzed the significance of Certified Public Accountants, brand index elements, build steps and build method.3, Analyze the factor of accounting firm brand. In this paper, the core issue is the brand index of Certified Public Accountants, the factors that affect the brand strength of Certified Public Accountants from different dimensions, contains a number of aspects. Relevant factors affecting the accounting firm brand analysis, brand impact factor of the accounting firm can be summarized as internal factors and external factors.4, Establish the brand index evaluation system for accounting firms. The accounting firm brand multi-level evaluation index system should be built in accordance with the principle of systematic applicability and comparability. Among them, level1indicator include:brand creation, brand protection, brand effectiveness, brand perception, brand internationalization, social responsibility. The level2indicators include:the firm revenue, organizational forms, professional qualifications, the number of Certified Public Accountants, Branch number, high-end customers and so on.19indicators in all. Then determine the indicators of evaluation criteria.5, Certified Public Accountants brand evaluation index weight determined. Determine the index weight to the expert judgment method (Delphi method) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method of combining.6, the accounting firm brand index applied research. Build the exponential model applied to the practice, Sichuan Province, accounting firms for the sample of empirical research, to validate the science and applicability of the model. The innovation of this paper is mainly reflected in the following areas:1,Through access to lots of documents and take full account of all aspects of the impact of factors to set up a complete accounting firm brand index evaluation system, to avoid from a project to evaluate the firm’s brand strength is not comprehensive. And accounting firm brand strength reflected the form of index, which will help the firm itself and the public’s understanding and recognition.2, The selection of the firm brand index evaluation method, multiple use of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis method. First, through literature research and efficacy coefficient method, the objective to determine the basic indicators and their score; the second is the evaluation of determining the weights, the use of expert judgment and the analytic hierarchy process, scientifically determine the weights of indicators at all levels to effectively avoid the impact of individual subjective evaluation results more convincing. Index using matlab7.0program for matrix operations, and effectively reduce the workload of the calculated data.3, brand or strength of the reviews of the accounting firm, are basically starting from the accounting firm within the static factors to be discussed and research, this article draws on David Ike, Kevin Lane Keller Erika other scholars research, an increase from a perception point of view and social responsibility of the consumer point of view and dynamic evaluation to assess the firm’s brand strength, making the firm brand index evaluation system more integrated, comprehensive.