The sustained development of Korean economy has brought a number of changes to the activities of real estate businesses and an era where it’s enough to assure the housing supply to run a real estate business has changed into another era where strategies of sales promotion are necessary. It is no exaggeration to say that the era where real estate agents, certified public appraisers and certified judicial scriveners have a lot of work on their plate are long gone. So in terms of the changing of marketing strategies, it is widely required to resort to SNS or other newly invented marketing methods capable of make up for the lack of communication with clients or the duplicity of information which could be found in the existing internet-based marketing method. Like any other businesses, real estate market has to respond to the change of conditions with marketing-oriented management.
For real estate agents to effectively respond to this change of conditions, they have to have a systematic plan and decision-making process accompanied with smooth problem-solving strategies, and they have to deploy a marketing strategy which is comprehensive and consumer-oriented by getting the market situations which are changing from moment to moment. In other words, they have to deploy an up-to-date marketing strategy by understanding the real estate market situations for effectively implementing marketing management activities.
Not long ago, we could see a new marketing method and strategic factors arrive, which has rendered possible the extension of the marketing territory and thus generalization of SNS practices by ordinary persons and that situation has made possible the relationship between information providers of real estate business and information users on the internet.
The results of this study shows that the attitude of internet and SNS users vis-a-vis real estate choice factors and their level of satisfaction and purchasing decision are of great importance in judging the success of the real estate marketing. But there is a shortfall in studies and researches about the relations of consumers’ satisfaction according to real estate choice factors and their purchasing decision. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the impacts of real estate choice factors upon the purchasing decision.
Furthermore, a questionnaire about the level of satisfaction of users and purchasing decision was drawn up targeting real estate information users, ordinary persons and information providers who are real estate agents with measurement tools of real estate choice factors according to the actual utilization of related internet and SNS, which are information supply, information sharing, interactivity, economic feasibility, convenience factor, credibility, trading characteristics hampering internet transactions, security responsibility factor and limitation factor.
The conclusions drawn from the results of this study are described as follows.
First, the investment purposes are more frequent than actual demands when it comes to the purpose of real estate information use via internet and SNS media. Henceforward, the frequency of actual demands will be likely to get bigger and real estate agencies have to consolidate the credibility and awareness of real estate marketing responding to the market situations.
Second, according to the survey of application of real estate internet and SNS media, 60% of agencies are found to have used internet-based information. In particular, a marketing method of providing the information by making the use of knowledge searching service provided by Naver are proved to be effective in augmenting the awareness of agencies and it seems to find more active ways of marketing methods by SNS media which make consumers participate directly to the process.
Third, real estate choice factors could boost the online transactions by augmenting the awareness of composing factors because these choice factors make possible the relationship between people and the providing and sharing of information via internet and SNS media, which could strengthen the credibility of consumers, the awareness of transactions and good feeling of consumers vis-a-vis transactions. For this purpose, a continuous management by agencies are necessary.
Fourth, more active marketing activities are needed because active online advertisements provided by real estate agencies will lead to the conclusion of transactions by implanting the credibility and awareness in the minds of consumers.
Fifth, for the reason that real estate choice factors impact upon consumers’ satisfaction and their decision making according to the types of real estate transaction and consumers’ characteristics, real estate agents have to approach consumers based on their characteristics and making use of diverse marketing methods according to the characteristics of consumers. In particular, real estate agencies have to adjust their marketing activities according to the investment patterns of ordinary people and making the consumers aware of the importance of the services of real estate agencies by providing to the consumers full and complete satisfaction for real estate is high-priced goods.