Kundnöjdhet i revision
En jämförelse mellan företag som reviderats av Big Four och företag som reviderats av någon annan revisionsbyrå
The need for auditing originates from the agency problem that arises due to the separation of ownership and control in companies. The purpose of the audit is to increase credibility of the financial statements that management uses to communicate with owners and other stakeholders. In order for the audit to fulfill its purpose a certain level of quality needs to be obtained. The auditor can also be seen as a provider of a commercial service in which service quality is important. Audit quality can thus be separated into technical quality, which is defined as the probability that the auditor both discovers and reports a breach in the client?s accounting system, and service quality, which relates to the provision of services in general. A common notion is that large auditing firms such as the Big Four maintain a higher technical quality than smaller firms. This thesis assumes that companies choose to be audited by a Big Four auditor because the technical quality is of importance to them. The purpose of the study is to gain insights into what makes a company choose one auditing firm over another and most importantly if the choice is affected by the company?s attitude towards technical quality. Since the auditing firms are hired and paid by the client, their survival depends on their ability to satisfy the client. Therefore it is important to understand the factors that drive client satisfaction. This study investigates differences in how quality attributes identified in previous studies affect client satisfaction among firms audited by the Big Four and firms audited by other auditing firms. Data is collected through a survey and analyzed statistically. The results show no difference in the relative importance of technical quality and service quality between the two groups of companies. However, they indicate that factors related to technical quality affect client satisfaction to a larger extent among firms audited by the Big Four than among other firms. This points to that auditor choice is affected by companies? attitude towards technical audit quality.