The concept of property management has been applied to Korea’s office building management after the financial crisis in 1997. After the financial crisis, foreign property management companies started their business in Korea and have been leading the...
The concept of property management has been applied to Korea’s office building management after the financial crisis in 1997. After the financial crisis, foreign property management companies started their business in Korea and have been leading the industry by purchasing office buildings with foreign capital. Despite of the overall recession of the real estate market, the office building market has been growing every year. However, due to the industry structure and social change, the demand for office buildings has increased and the consumers are demanding an office environment that is in line with the highly information-oriented society and the global community. Furthermore, changes in service demand and the market’s pressure for competition is arousing the necessity for professional and differentiated service quality enhancement methods. Based on these office market trends, this study analyses the causal relationship between management service quality and customer satisfaction to suggest efficient management methods. In addition, Busan is a metropolitan city of the south-eastern region of Korea that is symmetrical with Seoul but the office market in Korea is binary; Seoul and provincial cities. There is a lack of systematically arranged information on Busan’s office market. Therefore, this study analyses the characteristics of Busan’s office market with the foundation of data released by the Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs. Based on the researched characteristics, Busan has been divided into 3 regions (CBC, SBS, YBD) and a satisfaction research on office users has been conducted in each region to analyze the office building management services of Busan for the purpose of suggesting efficient management methods. The results and the implications of this study are as the following.
First of all, it was implied that office users rate the satisfaction level with not only factors like working environment and face-to-face services from the manager but also factors such as facilities of the building, its location, size, and level of awareness Therefore, in order to increase the overall satisfaction of office users, the overall management standard of the building in the following aspects must be enhanced; facility resources (quality of parking, safety, and security), spatial resources (quality of cleanliness and comfort), human resources, and physical quality of resources. Besides, the overall satisfaction of the building will spread a affirmative word-of-mouth and positively affect the customer loyalty. In order to increase the customer loyalty, it is efficient to enhance space resources such as level of cleanliness and the service quality of human resources.
Secondly, results showed that office users’ satisfaction level (US2) of the building’s management services are in correlation with process qualities such as spatial resources and human resources rather than result qualities such as facility resources and physical resources. This implies that the working environment and the relationship with the service provider effect the perception of service of office building users. Therefore, there is a need to increase the professionalism of management employees through efforts for work-environment enhancement and service education. Furthermore, efforts to enhance relationships with the tenants are necessary. The difference in the impact that service quality has on the user satisfaction provides a standard that guides how to distribute the given time and budget for rational management. Thus, after the degree of impact is compared, the factors with high impact must be constantly managed through feedbacks and the factors with low impact must be enhanced in terms of quality for the increase of customer satisfaction.
Thirdly, there can be a large difference in profit depending on the professionalism of the office building management and this difference in profit may lead to an eventual difference in property value. Therefore, the manager must use his/her ability to sympathize and find the users’ cause of dissatisfaction. Efforts to provide a differentiated service based on these causes will satisfy the customers and make them reuse the service. As a result, the investor can naturally secure profit and reinvest this resource in activities to create customer value. This will establish a positive cycle that increases both customer satisfaction and credibility of the provided service.
Fourthly, when defining the office market, a standardized office building classification assessment system that is universally acknowledged by the industry does not exist. The information by domestic office building information providers and the few officially released statistics of the Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs are not segmented into different classifications of buildings. It is difficult to apply the same standards to every office building because the office market status differs by region. Currently in the office market, the rating of office buildings complexly consider the factors that affect the decision of potential tenants and investors such as location, facilities, service, composition of tenants, and level of rent. Therefore, a more accurate classification of office buildings will be possible when implementing a new building classification assessment standard that includes not only the building status and the level of rent but also the level of customer satisfaction.