Measuring client-based corporate reputation in B2B professional services: scale development and validation
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a client-based reputation of business-to-business professional services firms scale (PSF-Rep) which measures clients’ perceptions of the reputation of professional service provider firms. So far, no multidimensional scale exists in the literature to measure the reputation of professional service firms, although the reputation dimensions of importance are likely to be very different from other settings.
Design/methodology/approach
From an initial pool of fieldwork-based items, an 18-item PSF-Rep scale is developed, which is validated using several samples – corporate financial decision-makers’ views of their accounting firms in a US national sample and organizational clients of one large legal firm with national presence.
Findings
The four-dimensional PSF-Rep scale meets all established reliability and validity criteria. Further, reputation and its dimensions (using PSF-Rep) are positively associated with important marketing outcomes, including word of mouth, loyalty intentions, trust and share of wallet.
Originality/value
As professional service markets become more competitive, firms recognize the importance of a good reputation in attracting customers. This research is the first to propose a psychometrically robust measure to capture client-based reputation of business-to-business professional services firms.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Julie Baker, Heiner Evanschitzky, Marko Sarstedt and John Cadogan for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Citation
Walsh, G., Beatty, S.E. and Holloway, B.B. (2015), "Measuring client-based corporate reputation in B2B professional services: scale development and validation", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 173-187. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-04-2014-0141
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited