One of the key factors that determines the success of a shopping centre is how efficient are its human resources utilized to maximize its value. This study investigates how corporate business strategies, as reflected in the perceptions and beliefs of shopping centre managerial staff, affect management efficiency, which is defined as efficiency of human resource utilization in shopping centre management. We measure the management efficiency of a shopping centre’s management by comparing inputs and outputs using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The inputs are defined as the different types of human resources utilized to manage a shopping centre, while outputs are measured by the rental value per floor area holding a range of exogenous factors constant. These exogenous factors include location attributes and physical characteristics of the shopping centres. Data on inputs and the beliefs and perceptions of managerial staff at different levels were collected by questionnaire surveys followed up by telephone calls and interviews. We collected data from 106 shopping centres located along the Mass Transit Railway lines. At the strategic level, we found that management that focused on satisfying the needs of shoppers rather than those of tenants was more efficient. However, whether management adopted a centralized or decentralized approach to shopping centre management had no impact on management efficiency. Management that aimed to maximize short term rental income and that which focused on achieving longer term branding effects had similar levels of management efficiency. For leasing and marketing management, we found that management that focused on achieving a planned optimal tenant mix was more efficient. Contrary to most people’s beliefs, management that believed in maximizing customer flow was less efficient. Our empirical data also suggested that the professional qualifications of leasing and marketing staff were not important as far as the efficiency of shopping centre management was concerned. At the operational level of property and facilities management, we found that shopping centres were more efficiently managed if management at this level believed that professional qualifications were important for property and facilities management, which was in sharp contrast with the findings for leasing and marketing management. We also found that management that aimed to control costs within budget and that which aimed to create value did not differ significantly from each other in terms of management efficiency. Finally, although property and facilities management were at the technical level of overseeing the physical structure, management that believed in satisfying users’ needs more than merely maintaining the physical conditions of the property tended to achieve higher management efficiency. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The paper aims at exploring the shoppers’ evaluation of service quality and its impact on shopping centre management. For shopping centre management team, understanding their customers’ perceptions of the centre’s service quality is an important issue as shoppers’ evaluations and perceptions is believed to be highly related to their patronage behaviors and purchase intention. Through a case study of a shopping centre, this research will try to offer some insights on the relationships between evaluations of service quality and the shoppers’ patronage behaviors which may derive some implications for contemporary shopping centre management. Literatures tell us that people elicit behavior after cognitive processing and formation of emotions. Adopting similar concept, marketing scholars found that customer behaviors are affected by their evaluations of service quality and satisfaction level through their perceptions on product or service attributes in cognitive processing. This study will follow the direction with reference to this model of behavior formation. In the case study, personal interviews had been conducted with selected shoppers at a shopping centre. They were asked to rate the performance of 36 sub-attributes of the shopping centre under 5 shopping centre attributes, namely “accessibility”, “merchandise”, “retail environment & design”, “services of centre’s staff” and “promotions”. They were also asked about their patronage behaviors at the shopping centre such as frequency of visits, duration of visits, amount of spending etc. It was found that the shoppers generally had positive evaluations on the centre’s performance on the 5 shopping centre attributes as a whole, especially had high evaluations on “accessibility”, “merchandise” and “services of centre’s staff”. Importance-performance analysis (IPA) was conducted to evaluate the service quality of 36 sub-attributes by comparing shoppers’ perceived actual performance and the importance level. It was found that only 8 sub-attributes, such as “access by public transportation”, “variety of stores” and “quality of stores” were found with high perceived service quality with high perceived actual performance and high importance level to the shoppers compared with other sub-attributes. These sub-attributes with high perceived service quality were tested with occurrence tendency of patronage behaviors in the correlation analysis. It was found that high perceived service quality on merchandises, facility management and organization of promotion activities to certain extend had influence on manipulating patronage behaviors. However, some results showed that sub-attributes with high perceived service quality showed minimal or even no correlation on any measure patronage behavior parameters. With reference to the model of purchase behavior regarding perceptions of service quality, the study may reveal that many possible antecedents of formation of shopping centre patronage behaviors may be still unreached in the contemporary studies. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management