dc.description.abstract | The traditional focus of construction companies had been that of constructing residential buildings. Whilst this purpose had served well in the past, the standard of living had increased significantly over the past few decades with the growth of the economy. The early and traditional models of residential housing now no longer satisfy the needs of the modern consumer. Consumers now demand not only good quality housing but at the same time, also look to the soft aspects (such as after sales service) in making their purchasing decisions.
The Taiwan residential housing market is characterized as a free competition market served by numerous construction companies. Over the years, several construction companies had exited the market as their products are unable to satisfy the demands of consumers. With the economic progress that Taiwan had experienced, as well as favorable Government policies, the Taiwan residential housing market has since 2003 been in its longest bull run. The result of this prolonged bull run had been high property prices and consumers are complaining about the sky high property prices. The Government had since started to intervene through policy implementation to cool the hot property market and consumers are waiting at the sidelines to determine the impact of these policy changes. Consequently, the volume of housing property transactions had slowed down. With this slowdown, it becomes more imperative for construction companies to not only provide quality housing options to Customers, but to ensure excellent after sales service as well. By addressing the specific needs of Customers, the construction companies would be able to increase company performance.
This study is different from other studies that had been completed which focuses on increasing competition within the construction industry, the relationship between housing prices and that of trading activities, or the impact of the level of prosperity in residential property market on construction company performance. Instead, this research had focused on the competitive advantage for construction companies by focusing on the consumer demand characteristics. This would focus on the consumer value product satisfaction and finding a way of designing suitable product required by consumers. The result of this research would be useful to construction companies in allocating their scarce resources.
The importance of satisfying consumer value for each demand characteristics cannot be further emphasized. This study would analyse the competitive advantage and competitive disadvantage which would provide insights to companies in allocating scarce company resources. By focusing on increasing the perceived benefit that the consumers derive or reducing the costs of activities where consumers do not, construction companies would be able to attain competitive advantage. Lastly, this research would also like to provide construction companies a different perspective, through consumer perspective research, that there is need to focus more on building enterprise brand image and after sales services to create competitive advantage. | en_US |