What Matters Most in Advertising Agency Performance to Clients: Implications and Issues on Their Relationship in Hong Kong

The relationship approach has long been adopted in many oriental societies as a means to achieve business objectives. Relationship marketing, a relatively new marketing concept, is widely regarded as a modern and effective way to develop competitive advantage especially in the service industry. Most of the research works in relationship marketing are focusing on the theory and conceptual basis; not many studies have been done on the operational and practical context. When put into practice, perceptions and the implementation style between the relationship partners are the fundamental factors leading to the effectiveness of relationship. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived importance of some relationship attributes among advertisers as clients of the advertising agencies. In the meantime, factors that influence advertisers' perceptions toward these attributes are examined, such as the time period of association, the type of industry and the level of advertising expenditure. In the 2000s, advertising agencies are facing the problem of retaining large global clients as the number of agencies has been reduced through mergers and acquisitions. In this study, the traditional advertiser-agency relationship will be studied with a new focus on relationship approach in a Chinese context.