social media in real estate eres 2012 - edinburgh
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Social Media in Real Estate ERES 2012 - Edinburgh. Christian Focke Verena Rock Stephanie Petzinger Ann Skrollan Schnurr 15th June 2012. Agenda. Social Media in Real Estate. I. Introduction. II. Literature Review. III. Methodology and Questionnaire Design. Agenda. IV. Findings. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Social Media in Real EstateERES 2012 - Edinburgh
Christian FockeVerena RockStephanie PetzingerAnn Skrollan Schnurr15th June 2012
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Social Media in Real Estate, ERES 2012 Edinburgh
Agenda2
III
III
IV
V
Introduction
Literature Review
Methodology and Questionnaire Design
Findings
Conclusion
Social Media in Real Estate
Age
nda
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I. Introduction
Is social media an important business tool in the real estate industry?
Ambiguous sentiment towards social media in the market, recently
obvious through the IPO of Facebook
Income sources of social media are questionable, but crucial
Do social media provide added value to business clients?
Paper investigates attitude and level of activity of real estate
industry as client of social media services
Goal is to find out• whether• to what extend • for which purposes
German real estate companies use / plan to use social media
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I. Introduction
What are Social Media?
Social media are web-based services which provide the opportunity to set up a public or semi-public profile. By blogging, instant messaging and uploading photos or videos, people are able to publish quickly and cheaply online. In business, social media offer companies the chance of advertisement, while consumers have the ability to address their positive and negative feedback to the company in a public way. However, it has to be considered that there are many variations of social media [see Boyd/ Ellison (2007); Taylor/ Lewin/ Strutton (2011); Bushey (2010)].
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II. Literature Review
Literature on social media use in general
Research in understanding and using social media was done
[Lipsman (2012); Taylor, Lewin, Struton (2011)]
A survey concerning the goals of social media applications in
profession in Germany was conducted [Kerst et al (2011)]
One research report defines four types of social media using
companies [Wilson et al (2011)]
Implementing social media as recruiting tool is frequently
recommended [Hunt (2010)]
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II. Literature Review
Literature on social media use in real estate
Academic studies about the influence of the internet on the real
estate market in general have been undertaken [Roulac (1996),
Dixon (2005)]
Examinations about the number of realtors and shopping centres
using social media in the US are existing [Babbage (2011)]
Except for some interviews with real estate actors there is a lack
of European and especially German research reports
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III. Methodology and Questionnaire Design
Research design
Questionnaire design:
• Part I: users of social media (9 questions)
• Part II: non-users of social media (3 questions)
• Screener: all participants (basic company information)
Questionnaire sent out to 787 real estate companies in Germany
Survey conducted in 2 rounds, using online survey tool
1. Frankfurt and Aschaffenburg (sample size of 220)
2. Germany (sample size of 567)
Response rate: approx. 10% (80 participants)
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IV. Findings
What does the industry think about social media?>>Key characteristics of participants
70% users, 30% non-users
Mostly local or regional players
058
011005
009
007003
008
Type of company(%)
n=62Brokerage
Residential developers
Commercial developers
Residential property managers
Housing companies
Commercial asset managers
Other
Employees between 36-45 on average
SME, but with history
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IV. Findings
What does the industry think about social media?>>Type of company – split by users and non-users
Other
Residential developer
Commercial developer
Placement agents
Residential prop. management
Housing company
Commercial Asset management
Brokerage
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
33
8
17
26
30
38
33
36
67
92
83
74
70
63
67
64
Non-User %User %
Users n=38, non-users n=23
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IV. Findings
What does the industry think about social media?>> Users of social media: favourite social media services
Types of social media used
1. Xing (27%)
2. Facebook (24%)
3. Google + (16%)
4. Youtube (13%)
…
7. Second Life (1%)
Other: E-mail newsletters,
homepage, real estate internet
platformsOther
Recruiting
RE Letting
Increase company publicity
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 %
Purposes of social media use
n=47, multiple answers possible
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Social Media in Real Estate, ERES 2012 Edinburgh
Others
Youtube
Google+
Second Life
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
27
8
8
0
6
3
0
0
9
27
4
15
12
23
4
0
9
24
13
27
30
37
13
5
0
8
17
12
21
23
17
0
55
32
58
46
30
14
67
95
with particular frequency
frequently
occasionally
seldom
never
IV. Findings
What does the industry think about social media?>> Users: Utilization of different types of social media
answers in %n=45
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IV. Findings
What does the industry think about social media?>> Users: Changes in business success through use of social media
n=41scale from 5=highly relevant to 1=irrelevant
(scale 1- 5) ave. scoreBetter image 3,08Increase company publicity 3,06Better industry network 2,46Higher customer quality 2,22Increase in r.e. sales turnover 2,14Decrease recruiting time 2,06Increase in r.e. letting turnover 2,00Decrease property marketing time 2,00Higher recruiting/employee quality 1,68
What kind of changes in business success? Is social media more effective than other media channels?
Score (0- 3) ave. ScoreR.E. internet platforms 1,67newspaper 1,62Billboards on facade 1,49Mailings 1,38Email/ Newsletter 1,21Poster advertising 0,81Other 0,78Radio 0,63TV 0,39
n=39scale from 3=better results than xx to 1=worse results; 0=n.a.
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Other reasons
insufficient knowledge
use is complicated/not self-explanatory
Disturbance of regular business processes
legal insecurities
no control on content
no relevance
no data security
0 10 20 30
IV. Findings
What does the industry think about social media?>> Non-users: Reasons for not using social media as business tool
n=23answers in %
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IV. Findings
What does the industry think about social media?>> Non-users: Will social media be used in the future?
Only 48% of participants consider using social media in the
future
If future use seems possible, social media will be used for the
purpose of:
1. Winning new customers (26%)
2. Increasing company publicity (23%)
3. Real estate letting (17%)
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IV. Findings
Validation of assumptions (I)
1. Firms in the real estate sector currently use social media services for purposes of
recruiting and marketing only and do not intend to use them for other corporate
activities in the future.
Assumption seems partly supported:
Social Media in use for Marketing
But not for Recruiting (Despite XING being the most frequently used Service)
Expansion of use areas not planned
2. Social media services are used more by firms with young employees than by firms
with older employees. Not supported! Median age group is the same for both users and non users (36-45 y)
Distribution of answers is more skewed to the elder age groups for users than for non
users.
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IV. Findings
Validation of assumptions (II)
3. Social media services are used more by younger (more recently founded) companies
than by older companies. Not supported: Vintage years do not differ between the user group and the non-user
group.
4. The greater the importance of private customers among the total customer base of a
company, the greater the likelihood that it uses social media services. No clear picture, rather not true.
Share of users among commercial developers relatively high
Share of users among residential landlords relatively low
Individual response: “Our private clients do not want to be displayed in social
media.”
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V. ConclusionSumming it all up…
Majority of responding firms already use social media services
Most of current non-users do not plan to become users in the future
For users, a “sound” social media strategy does not seem to be in
place
Marketing on company-level is pre-dominant reason for social media
use
Social media are rather used by established companies than by
“start-ups”
Overall, social media benefits were hard to assess
Future research: Derive higher response rate for greater statistical
significance