Advertising and the Certified Public Accountant in Kenya
Abstract
This study sought to establish various issues related to
advertising for the professional accountant. These were:
(1) What constitutes advertising for the accountant?
(2) What are the ~embers' vie~~:to advertise or not
to advertise?
(3) What are the reasons behind these views?
For the research, data was gathered from auditing firms
in Kenya and from members of the Institute of Certified Public
Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK). The Chi-square test was used to
test whether there is any relationship between opinion of a
firm and firm size, firm age and firm location. It was also
used to test whether there is a relationship between an
individual's opinion and his age and his profession. Kendall's
coefficient of concordance and Spearman's rank correlation Coefficient
were used to test for similarities between opinions of firms and
l
individuals.
It was found that the only variables that have a statistically
significant relationship are:
(1) Firm ~ize and the action that a firm would take
if advertising was allowed and
(2) Individual's age and decision on relaxation of
advertising rules.
(Hi)
Firms and LndLvLdua'Lswere found to be in accord in their
rankings of what constitutes advertising and in reasons why
advertising should not be relaxed. They, however, differed
on reasons why advertising rules should be relaxed.
Evidence gathered from the study suggests that there is
no unanimous opinion on whether or not advertising rules should
be relaxed. This may indicate that time is not yet ripe for
a relaxation or that members are not adequately aware of the
advantages and disadvantages of such relaxation.
Finally, the findings of this research should be understood
and evaluated in light of the limitations of the study.
These were mainly three. First, there was a time constraint
hence not all variables relevant to the studyw ere included.
A serious omission was the general public. Second, data tended
to favour some categories of classification and there was need
to redefine the,classes. The results could thus be biased.
Third, the statistical tool used, namely, the Chi-square may
be inappropriate for the data as some cells were rather small.
Publisher
School of Business