The Chamber of Commerce is a body of business and professional men working together to advance the interests of its town or city; to encourage its development and prosperity; to improve and extend its trade facilities; to encourage the growth of local industry; and to make its area healthy in the field of business and culturally and educationally progressive. It is a clearing house of commercial thought and opinion. It gives general service to the commercial and industrial community as a whole, and individual service to its own members.

Thousands of trade inquiries pass through the chambers' secretariat each year. Information is circulated to members on a wide variety of subjects – new or prospective alterations in Government or municipal regulations, wage variations, tariffs, import and export rulings, taxation, marketing regulations, and the like. Services which are provided both for members and for non-members include the issuing of certificates of origin for goods being exported, the conduct of surveys of the quality of goods, and the conduct of cases of commercial arbitration submitted by parties in dispute.

Unlike most other commercial bodies, chambers of commerce have no special sectional interest to further. They are concerned with the preservation and advancement of the interest of all groups – industrialists, wholesalers, retailers; importers and exporters; transporters by road, sea, and air; life and fire insurance; merchants; bankers; distributors; engineers; the service trades; small, medium, and large companies; and all the other important segments that go to make up commerce, industry, trade, and finance, these constituting actual chamber of commerce membership. The chamber practices coordination of the activities of various groups, so that the needs of each may be properly merged into the greater needs of the whole community.

Much of the work of a chamber is hard to define, being the expression of public views of what it considers the natural interest – views, for example, on excessive Government expenditure and repressive taxation; correction of anomalies and elimination of injustices within the framework of the taxation system; resistance to undesirable and unduly restrictive legislation; the abolition of unnecessary official controls and the easing of temporary controls; reducing the costs of doing business; ensuring an adequate labour force through planned, officially assisted immigration; the production of better recruits to business from the schools; the encouragement of conditions favouring farm and factory production and the expansion of local and overseas markets; gaining acceptance of an overseas borrowing programme for national development; and tariff revision and the pattern of overseas trade agreements.

There is a tendency to think that chambers of commerce do nothing else but adversely criticise, for criticism attracts attention, while cooperation is taken for granted. Thus the cooperative work of the chambers is often ignored.

Chambers, being voluntary bodies, arrange their organisation to meet best the needs of their members. They are governed by an executive, with a president and such other officers as may be decided. In most chambers permanent committees have been set up to deal with particular subjects, like national and local taxation, transport, commercial law and legislation, and tariffs and overseas trade. Some chambers have also formed trade sections.

Local chambers of commerce are linked up in a national body, the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand. It deals with national subjects only and works on the principal of freedom of competitive enterprise. It collates the views of constituent chambers, coordinates business opinion, and makes representations to the Government and other authorities. Its strength lies in its diversified and overall coverage.