Determinants of repurchase intentions of real estate agent services: Direct and indirect effects of perceived ethicality

Research on the psychological determinants of consumer repurchase decisions for professional services is limited. The authors focus on real estate agents and develop a model of determinants of repurchase intentions of agent services. The model was tested on a sample of clients (property sellers) for a Scandinavian real estate agent. The perceived ethicality of the service provider was found to influence repurchase intentions in three different ways. Clients’ co-production motivation moderated (increased) the effect of perceived ethicality. The findings have important implications for researchers and managers of real estate agent services.     

我国房地产经纪业服务质量评价研究

为了清楚了解我国房地产经纪业的服务质量现状,以SERVQUAL模型为基础,开发出了衡量我国房地产经纪业服务质量的量表,并利用该量表对我国房地产经纪业的服务质量进行评价。研究结果表明,我国房地产经纪服务业为顾客提供的服务质量较低,主要体现在信号显示机制不健全、服务过程质量与服务效用差三方面。     

A learning-oriented decision-making process for real estate brokerage service evaluation

Real estate brokers or realtors are expected to possess superior knowledge of their local markets and typically require commissions in return for their services in real estate sales. To justify these commissions, it is important to evaluate brokerage service performance. We develop a learning-oriented decision-making process for evaluating real estate brokerage services, which concentrates on understanding the nature, the role, and the interaction of the evaluation aspects of real estate brokerage service quality by integrating cognitive maps and the Decision EXpert approach. Results suggest that this framework permits new rudiments to be considered in the realtor decision-making and sales process, facilitating transparency, and understanding of realtor functions that may lead to recommendations to improve the performance and quality of these functions. Avenues for future research are also presented.     

Illustrations of financing and tax transfers in owner financed real estate sales

The dramatic increase in seller or creative financing in the late 1970s and early 1980s has captured the attention of many academicians and practitioners. The primary focus in the existing literature is on explaining differences in loan terms between creative financing and conventional financing and on how these differences are capitalized into sale prices. This paper investigates the role of financing opportunity costs and federal income taxation and their consequences on real estate financing. Illustrations of the model show the feasibility of interpersonal financing transfers (between buyers and sellers) and intertemporal tax transfers (across time periods).     

C2C电子商务服务质量实证研究

C2C模式下决定顾客感知服务质量的因素包括C2C网站和C2C卖家,其中C2C网站服务质量包括网站质量、信息质量、易用性以及可靠性4个维度,C2C卖家的服务质量包括客户服务质量、物流配送质量以及可信性3个维度。顾客感知的C2C卖家质量低于C2C网站质量,而在重视程度方面顾客更看重C2C卖家质量。     

An empirical investigation of framing effects in negotiations: A study of single‐family home sales

This paper integrates Prospect Theory and the concept of framing in a study of consumer negotiated pricing in a real estate context. Building on previously conducted experimental designs, a field survey indicated that home sellers using sales price as a reference point display greater willingness to make concessions than those who use equity as their reference point. Further, the third‐party influence of the realtor was shown to alter Prospect Theory predictions so that even equity‐based sellers became concessionary. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Qualitative One-to-Many Multi-Issue Negotiation: Approximating the QVA

When there is one buyer interested in obtaining a service from one of a set of sellers, multi-attribute or multi-issue auctions can ensure an allocation that is efficient. Even when there is no transferable utility (e.g., money), a recent qualitative version of the Vickrey auction may be used, the QVA, to obtain a Pareto-efficient outcome where the best seller wins. However, auctions generally require that the preferences of at least one party participating in the auction are publicly known, while often making this information public is costly, undesirable, or even impossible. It would therefore be useful to have a method that does not impose such a requirement, but is still able to approximate the outcome of such an auction. The main question addressed here is whether the Pareto-efficient best-seller outcome in multi-issue settings without transferable utility (such as determined by the QVA) can be reasonably approximated by multi-bilateral closed negotiation between a buyer and multiple sellers. In these closed negotiations parties do not reveal their preferences explicitly, but make alternating offers. The main idea is to have multiple rounds of such negotiations. We study three different variants of such a protocol: one that restricts the set of allowed offers for both the buyer and the seller, one where the winning offer is announced after every round, and one where the sellers are only told whether they have won or not after every round. It is shown experimentally that this protocol enables agents that can learn preferences to obtain agreements that approximate the Pareto-efficient best-seller outcome as defined by the auction mechanism. We also show that the strategy that exploits such a learning capability in negotiation is robust against and dominates a Zero Intelligence strategy. It thus follows that the requirement to publicly announce preferences can be removed when negotiating parties are equipped with the proper learning capabilities and negotiate using the proposed multi-round multi-bilateral negotiation protocol.     

Protocols for automated negotiations with buyer anonymity and seller reputations

In many Internet commerce applications buyers can easily achieve anonymity, limiting what a seller can learn about any buyer individually. However, because sellers need to keep a fixed web address, buyers can probe them repeatedly or pool their information about sellers with the information obtained by other buyers; hence, sellers' strategies become public knowledge. Under assumptions of buyer anonymity, publicly‐known seller strategies, and no negotiation transaction costs for buyers, we find that take‐it‐or‐leave‐it offers will yield at least as much seller profit as any attempt at price discrimination could yield. As we relax those assumptions, however, we find that sellers, and in some cases buyers as well, may benefit from a more general bargaining protocol. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Adaptive Selling to the Professional Services Market

Style flexing is the adaptation of communication style by the seller to enhance communication and marketing effectiveness. Client style categorization is an important and complex process. This study introduces the utilization of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in communication style categorization when marketing to service professionals. Applications of the MBTI in adaptive selling are discussed in the context of contacting, observing, and interviewing the client.     

Getting a no-reply is also a reply: An investigation of unreplied consumer attributions

No-replies are common in everyday life, especially when individuals interact in online platforms. When consumers participate in the marketplace and interact with sellers or other consumers, they may encounter various kinds of outcomes. Sometimes offerings may succeed, while other times they are explicitly declined. But it is also possible that offerings and requests are unreplied where no explicit acceptance or rejection response is given. This paper examines the hypothesis that no-replies lead consumers to stronger behavioral intentions than negative replies, through different casual attributions. Consumers make attributions to infer causal explanations, based on the type of reply they get from others consumers. Across our studies, we evidence the effect of no-reply on several contexts and reveal the mediating role of attributions on the influence of no-replies on behavioral intentions. The results also suggest that no-replies lead people to higher attribution of self-responsibility to the outcome than negative reply, however, company’s apologies for consumer’s no-reply overturn the effect. Finally, considering that individuals do not require much effort for a no-reply and effort is a proxy for interest, it generates worse attributions.     

Relationship Marketing and Consumers: A Social Dilemmas Approach

In this article a Social Dilemmas approach is taken toward relationship marketing, and consumer and seller behavior. This approach offers several advantages. It explicitly takes into account the dilemma that results from the differences in interests between consumers and sellers, as well as their interdependency and tendency toward opportunistic behavior. It focuses simultaneously on the two parties in dynamic interaction. It therefore provides a more generic and encompassing perspective than the common consumer behavior perspective, or the one-sided emphasis in marketing on seller activities. In contrast to a non-marketing (or selling) orientation of sellers, both transaction and relationship marketing seek a cooperative win-win solution to the consumer-seller dilemma. This requiresboth parties to compromise and cooperate and refrain from non-cooperation. Cooperative and non-cooperative consumer and seller behaviors are described. In addition, the SD-approach suggests some factors that influence interactions, transactions and relationships between consumers and sellers and may stimulate cooperation in real-life commercial dilemma situations. Some implications for marketing and consumer behavior theory and research, and marketing practice are discussed.     

Acquisitions of divested business units: A typology and strategies for success

Acquisitions are notoriously difficult to execute successfully. Poor implementation of the postacquisition integration process is a major source of acquisition value destruction. To find new solutions for this vexing problem, we leverage the emerging, triadic view of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities, which emphasizes the interconnectedness between sellers, acquirers, and the units that are transferred between them. We apply the triadic lens to acquisitions of divested business units, and we find that a unit’s experiences with its seller before and during divestiture can profoundly shape the unit’s needs and expectations, which, in turn, must be addressed by the acquirer in the integration process. We identify four key mechanisms—status, resource accessibility, trust, and self-sufficiency—that underpin the seller’s impact on the divested unit, and we develop a typology—comprising favored, neglected, shocked, and independent units—that animates the ramifications of the seller’s actions. Then, for each type, we discern strategies for its postacquisition integration execution that are tailored to its distinctive needs, which originate from its experiences with the seller. To make these insights practical and readily implementable, we provide a diagnostic checklist for identifying the four types of divested units and offer an action plan of type-specific strategies for successfully managing them in the postacquisition integration process.     

Real Estate Agents As a Source of Information for Home Buyers

The concern for the consumer's right to be adequately informed when making a purchase has provided an impetus for legislation and research in a variety of consumer decision areas. Absent from these efforts has been any examination of the most important consumer decision—the purchase of a home. This study examined the quantity and quality of information that a key marketing agent in the purchase of a home, the real estate broker, is capable of providing consumers. A variety of informational areas are examined with most of them centered on the quality of life in a community neighborhood. The results suggest areas where brokers can be better informed and thereby better serve their public as a source of information.     

Determining Relationship Quality in the Development of Business-to-Business Financial Services

ABSTRACT

The quality of relationships built with customers during the New Service Development (NSD) process is a current concern of researchers in relationship marketing (and NSD) and is particularly important in a highly competitive environment characterised by rapidly changing customer needs like the one of financial services. The primary relationship analyzed in relationship marketing is the one between seller and buyer, but the focal type of relationship for new product and service development is the one termed “the knowledge relationship” (Gummesson 2002), a relationship used to create knowledge. This paper reports the results of in depth qualitative research on the factors that impact on the quality of such relationships developed between new service developers and their customers during the NSD process of business-to-business financial services. Results show that the most important factors that affect relationship quality are: communication quality of the relationship; the development of strong relationship bonds; the quality of relationship partners; a strong customer orientation in NSD based on a proactive approach of relationship partners during the NSD process, and proficiency in knowledge brokering.     

My username is IN! The influence of inward vs. outward wandering usernames on judgments of online seller trustworthiness

Previous research showed that words for which the consonant articulation spots wander from the front of the mouth to the back (e.g., EPOK; inward) are preferred over words with the reversed sequence (e.g., EKOP; outward). In the present research, we extended this effect to judgments of online seller trustworthiness and choice of transaction partners. In seven experiments in the context of the online auction market eBay, we show that the mere use of inward compared to outward usernames increases the level of trustworthiness ascribed to online sellers (Experiments 1A, 1B, 2, 4A, 4B) and the likelihood that a seller is chosen for the economic transaction (Experiment 5). As a boundary condition, this effect is reduced when diagnostic information about the seller's reputation is introduced (Experiment 3). We discuss these results in terms of their practical implications for marketing strategies of online sellers and in terms of their relation to research on interpersonal trust.     

Effect of Buyer and Seller Experience on Buy It Now Pricing

ABSTRACT

Although auctions have been around for centuries, online auctions are still a relatively new phenomenon. This paper examines the phenomenon of online auctions, specifically on a pricing option known as “Buy It Now.” With this option, a buyer can purchase merchandise immediately at a stated price and truncate the auction process. Auction items sold with a Buy It Now price tend to be at a higher price than the high bid price for an identical item sold through an ascending-bid auction. In addition, Buy It Now prices tend to attract risk averse bidders while high bidders of ascending-bid auctions tend to be less risk averse or risk neutral bidders. On the other hand, we found more experienced sellers sell their items with a Buy It Now price while less experienced sellers sell their items through an ascending-bid process. Thus, experience and risk are factors in choosing a Buy It Now price for the seller and buyer.     

Understanding the Antecedents and Consequences of Live Chat Use in Electronic Markets

Online shopping has progressed from having consumers passively browse through the webpages of online stores to having them proactively engage in communication dialogues with the sellers themselves via live chat. Modern-day consumers can now directly contact online sellers and inquire about the products they intend to purchase through the live chat medium available in the webpages of online stores, such as Taobao.com. In this study, the conceptual framework of motivation, opportunity, and ability was extended to understand the antecedents of using live chat and to lengthen such an understanding on one’s eventual intention to transact on the website from the trust-oriented perspective. A total of 222 online consumers of Taobao.com were surveyed, and their responses validated the proposed conceptual model and confirmed the research hypotheses. Results of the investigation indicated that perceived information asymmetry and fears of seller opportunism, encapsulated under motivation dimension, and perceived personal expertise, which manifests ability dimension, significantly influence the use of live chat by consumers. The results further demonstrated that live chat use positively affects the perceived interactivity of consumers, thereby increasing their intention to transact. The influence of live chat use on the perceived interactivity of consumers and its effect on one’s intention to transact online are negatively moderated by the trust of consumers in a seller. The findings contribute to our understanding communication services for e-commerce in general and to the realization of real-time communication technology in particular.     

Examining differences in consumer reactions to partitioned prices with a variable number of price components

Partitioned pricing is a tactic in which a seller presents multiple prices for a single product or service instead of one, all-inclusive price. This research investigates effects of partitioned prices containing a variable number of price components, under varying levels of seller trustworthiness, and with or without the presentation of the total price. The results indicate that partitioning into a large number of price components, relative to a small number of price components, negatively affects perceived fairness and purchase intentions for less trustworthy, but not more trustworthy, sellers when the total price is not presented. However, partitioning into a large number of price components positively affects fairness and purchase intentions, regardless of seller trustworthiness, when the total price is presented. The research also examines effects of partitioning on price estimation and recall.     

Droht eine Immobilienpreisblase in Deutschland?

Since 2009, real estate prices in Germany have been rising rapidly after a period of stagnation during the Great Recession. This raises the question of whether the recent price increases are fundamentally driven or rather an indication of a real estate bubble in Germany. To tackle this question, we take a look at several real estate demand-side indicators. As real estate bubbles sometimes form in certain sub-segments of the real estate market only, the authors also conduct a disaggregate analysis by looking at different real estate types in Germany’s most important metropolitan areas. In what follows, we investigate the relation of real estate prices and rents and test for explosive behaviour of the price-generating processes. Our findings suggest that the recent upswing in the German real estate market seems to be based on fundamental factors. Except for the sub-segment of flats in some of the metropolitan areas, there is no evidence for price increases being unsustainable.     

The (Dis)Advantage of Friendship on Information Search and Satisfaction

Across four experiments, and focusing on consumer behaviour in a high uncertainty market (i.e., a used car market), this research shows that prior to a purchase, buyers are less motivated to search for information when they purchase a product from a friend (compared to someone they do not know). We also show that buyers are more willing to search for information after a transaction when sellers are their friends, a reversal in search behaviour due to the greater social risk that buyers bear when dealing with a friend. Finally, this research shows that both the transaction outcome (i.e., positive versus negative) and the buyer–seller relationship determine the degree to which people are satisfied or dissatisfied with a seller. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.