Public relations agencies in the UK travel industry: Does size matter?

The relationship between an agency and its client has a limited time scale. Thus far,research has primarily focused on the relationship between advertising agencies and their clients. Based on a study of the existing literature, most of which is advertising based,this article explores the agency-client relationship for public relations agencies in the UK travel industry. Our model concentrates on the four phases of client-agency relationships:agency selection; successful relationships;failing relationships; and agency switching.Several factors influence these four phases, but this article focuses specifically on an under-examined factor: whether the size of a client's public relations agency might influence the nature of the relationship between a client and agency. UK travel companies with different sized public relations agencies were interviewed to test the model and assess the impact of agency size. We found evidence to suggest that agencies should be aware of how their size may influence client perception during the selection process. Agencies similarly should be conscious that their size might act as an indication of how clients perceive their ability, and indeed may influence their client-agency relationship on an ongoing basis. Attention to size-related perceptions may help prevent clients switching agencies.