Lai-san Kwok and Eileen Mary Hastings - Hong Kong Institute of ...

Hong Kong Real Estate Agency Industry:Survey on Important Marketing Factors and Branding Attributes in light of Service Intangibilityaround that area. Therefore, they are usuallylocated in the shopping mall of residential areaor industrial area.“Physical evidence” is one of the important factorin 7Ps as it has a profound effect on theimpressions customers form about the quality ofthe service they received. However, it is foundin this study that “technology and facilities” as akind of physical evidence is not very importantas compare to other factors. It shows that“physical evidence” is not as important as otherPs and reputation in the Hong Kong real estateagency industry.Apart from 7Ps, Zeithaml suggests in Dodds,Monroe and Grewal (1991)“External cues of price, brand name and storename are three cues that influence perceptionsof product quality and value, and hencewillingness to buy.”Yet it is found in this study that brand name ismore important than price. In Questionnaire 1,“reputation” has a higher ranking than “price”and in the Questionnaire 2, respondentperceived “brand name” as a better indicatorof service quality than “price”.It is found that 39% of the respondents havecompany logos which fulfill the basic requirementbranding. Branding is utilized in the real estateagency industry especially for some large scalecompany. Branded real estate agency companyperceived branding strategy to be very importantto their business marketing. It agreed with Carsonand Ruston (1989)“A service has no physical appearance... It isusually base on creating an appropriate imagefor provider of service... This image can beviewed as brand image of the company.”Real estate industry is a service provision industry.Therefore branding can assist in reducing theintangibility of service. This is generally agreedamong respondents.Customers are not buying a service brand. Theybuy benefits instead. Therefore branding mustserve to communicate the benefits provided bythe service to the customers. It is strongly agreedamong respondents that a brand name cantranslates attributes into functional or emotionalbenefits. Therefore a real estate agency servicebrand should give a collected perception ofbenefits to the customer. Keller (1998) suggeststhat“Brands provide a shorthand device or meansof simplification for their product decision.”The respondents in this study strongly agreedthis statement. Consumers simplify informationprocess by forming subjective judgment or beliefsabout brands. A brand’s subjective judgmentsare the perceived positions of the brand in theperceptual product attributes space. Therefore,evaluation on the service benefits is based onthe branding attributes communicated to thecustomers.An effective way to make branding tangible isto use as many physical elements as possiblee.g. employees, buildings, physical facilities etc.However it is found from the study that it is notthe case for the Hong Kong real estate agencyindustry. Branding attributes which is physical innature such as “technology” and “good customerservice” are ranked lower than those intangiblein nature like “quality” and “reputation”.“Technology” and “good customer service” areserved to support the service instead of beingthe core of branding. Respondents also agreedon this point as they perceived “service” as themost important marketing factor category. Thecore of the branding is “service”. Therefore theservice itself has to be of high quality and suitthe need of customers. Otherwise marketingcannot achieve anything no matter how well theplan is. It is true for the real estate agencyindustry. Agency has to provide tailor made andhigh quality service to customers. Without thesetwo branding attributes, a brand cannot last long.Additional premium can never be charged andreputation can never be built.SBE30