Competitive Advantage of Thai Real Estate Enterprises: An Importance–Performance Analysis of Value Chain Activities

Abstract

When Thailand becomes a member of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, the subsequent freer trade will increase market competitiveness in South East Asia and Thai enterprises will inevitably face a tough situation. To help enterprises survive in such a competitive domain, the classical concept of competitive advantage is considered herein. In this study, three aspects of competitive advantage are examined, namely cost leadership, differentiation and service quality. A total of 410 respondents that specialized in various real estate value chain activities such as valuation, design and construction, property management, real estate brokering and property development were selected. Data were mainly collected using questionnaires from service recipients and analyzed using importance–performance analysis. It is found that all value chain activities have a high level of competitive advantage in terms of both importance and performance. Service quality was the most important and performed aspect. However, although competitive advantage seems to be satisfied overall, property management and real estate development had lower scores than the industry average in every aspect of competitive advantage, which may blur their strategic positioning.