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Managing “keep” factors of
office tenants to raise
satisfaction and loyalty
Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek
Department of Urban Planning and Real Estate Management, Faculty of
Architecture, Building and Planning, Eindhoven University of Technology,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to add to behavioural property literature and improve the
landlord-tenant relationship, through exploring the effect of office (location and building) “keep”, push
and pull factors on satisfaction and loyalty of tenants.
Design/methodology/approach – Structured face-to-face interviews with 38 office tenants are
used to identify the important push, pull and “keep” factors and their effects. The results are placed
within marketing theories on competition and customer intimacy, and translated into management
implications.
Findings – The analyses indicate that retaining a tenant requires more relationship efforts than
competing through offering a good price/quality ratio. A lot of subjectivity is involved in the tenant’s
valuation process of “keep” factors, which are mostly functional. Push and pull factors are mostly
technical, but can only raise satisfaction up to a certain level.
Research limitations/implications – The sample was confined to two multi-tenant buildings with
small tenants in one region. In the future, the approach should be extended to other regions and tenant
types and repeated in time to get longitudinal results.
Practical implications – The empirical results can assist landlords in managing their office
buildings better. Landlords can also use the structured interviews as a customer-relationship
management instrument.
Originality/value – This paper gives more insight in “keep” factors and how they can help benefit
the relationship between landlord and tenant(s). Also it places studies on tenants’ choices and building
factors within existing marketing theories on competition.
Keywords Office buildings, Customer loyalty, Customers, Interviews
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In many European countries, the commercial real estate market can be characterized as
demand-driven. The economic recession at the turn of the century decreased the
demand for space of many companies, while the cyclical nature of new office
developments still increased the supply. Naturally, increased vacancy-rates were the
result. Those periods of economic downturn can be very difficult for landlords with a
big real estate portfolio, because they have to compete with other office-space providers
more than usual.
Therefore, many of them widened their focus from competing with others in trying
to attract new tenants, to putting increased effort into retaining their current tenants.
They realised more and more, that occupants should be treated as valued customers
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-7472.htm
Managing “keep”
factors of office
tenants
43
Received July 2006
Revised March 2007
Property Management
Vol. 26 No. 1, 2008
pp. 43-55
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0263-7472
DOI 10.1108/02637470810848886
and high priority should go to meeting their needs (Pinder et al., 2003). Reichheld (1996)
showed through research of 12 different business sectors that the retention of 5 per cent
more customers would increase profit by 35-95 per cent, depending on the line of
business. For office building management the increase could be 40 per cent. This is
lower than for the consumer-products sectors, because not all possible advantages
apply to building management. The ones that do apply are the volume effect (reduced
vacancy between two consecutive tenants), the decrease in acquisition costs (lower
marketing expenses and first-months premiums) and the decrease in operating costs
(tenant is familiar with services, procedures, etc.). Also, the costs of attracting new
customers are much higher than for keeping present customers (Li, 2003; Matzler and
Hinterhuber, 1998). So focussing on one’s current customers’ needs through customer
relationship management (CRM) can be a very rewarding effort.
This has been researched by academics up to a certain level, looking at relationship
management from a corporate real estate management point of view (McCarty et al.,
2006), or at the needs of occupants to help real estate agents (Leishman et al., 2003) or
government policy-making (Pen, 2002). But possible management directions for
landlords to raise tenant loyalty are scarcely mentioned. Since Leishman et al. found
that agents do not always have the right perception of the importance of certain
occupant demands, it is likely that landlords have the same problems.
According to the work of Dogge (Dogge, 2002; Dogge and Smeets, 2004), a satisfied
tenant is more committed, resulting in a higher tendency to be loyal to the landlord and
not move. Therefore, it is important to know particularly what “moves” a tenant and
what increases satisfaction. In research fields like tourism and migration, those aspects
that can move a person (both emotionally and behaviourally) are called push-/and pull
factors. Push factors are aspects of the current situation that are negative and therefore
push someone away. Pull factors are aspects of “the competition” that pull someone
away. When these factors fall below a certain level, there is a risk that the tenant
decides to move.
Most studies looking at office tenants’ choices have focused on location preferences,
and do not include the building (Leishman and Watkins, 2004). But Pen (2002) has
looked into the movement decision-making processes of companies more intensively
and identified an extensive list of push and pull factors both on the location, building
and organisational levels. Additionally, Pen also identified several “keep” factors,
which is a type of factor that has received little attention so far. These “keep” factors
are aspects of the current situation that stimulate a company to stay. The research
described in this paper shows that while push/pull factors were mostly technical
aspects of the buildings (e.g. maintenance), “keep” factors are different buildings
aspects, namely the ones with a more functional nature (e.g. facilities).
This paper describes exploratory research into “keep” factors and their effect on
tenant satisfaction and loyalty to the current landlord. It seeks to add to the growing
body of behavioural property literature, by researching relevant aspects of the decision
making of tenants. Also discussed is whether the results confirm existing theories on
(location-)decision making and customer satisfaction. The following section first
reviews existing literature on competition, relationship marketing, location decision
theory, and keep, push and pull factors leading up to the conceptual model of this
research. Then the data collection and the results are described, followed by a
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discussion of these results, both related to theories as to the practice of a landlord. The
last section provides a final note with recommendations for future research.
Literature review
To beat the competition, Porter (1980) distinguished three different basic strategies,
which are still seen as relevant today. One should either focus on the (efficiency of the)
process, the (novelty of the) product or (identifying the needs of) specific customers.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, marketing activities have shifted in general from
transaction marketing (focus on product and process) to relationship marketing, with a
more long-term view on customers (Dogge, 2002; Gro
¨nroos, 1994). Treacy and
Wiersema (1993) call this customer focus strategy “customer intimacy”. CRM is exactly
what customer intimacy implies, because it uses all kinds of instruments to get more
insight into customers and their needs.
According to the service profit chain by Heskett et al. (1997), it is customer value
that determines satisfaction, which in its turn determines loyalty. But only a very high
level of satisfaction leads to loyalty (Matzler and Hinterhuber, 1998; Li, 2003). The
value a customer places on something is “...the customers overall assessment of the
utility of a product based on perceptions of what is received and what is given”
(Zeithaml, 1988). From the moment of purchasing a product or renting an office, the
customer starts to compare the expected and actual performance of the product. The
standard behavioural assumptions of neo-classical economics are that the firm can
make rational profit-maximising decisions based on full information. But tenants do
not possess all the information about market conditions and vacancies, and thus often
make sub-optimal location decisions (Alexander, 1979) based on perceptions. These
perceptions relate to all aspects of the location and building and are affected by a range
of factors (Pinder et al., 2003).
Rust et al. (2001) identified three elements of value that a landlord should try to
deliver each individual tenant. The first element is the objective value called “value
equity”, which concerns the rational price/quality ratio of the office. The second
element is the subjective value called “brand equity”. Of the three main location
decision theories, the behavioural theory that was identified in the 1960s also stresses
the fact that the decision to move is based on objective and subjective aspects of both
the current and possible future locations (Pen, 2002). The same has been shown for
defining workplace utility (Pinder et al., 2003). The third element is called “retention
equity”, which is the value the customer gives to the relationship with the landlord.
Value equity can be influenced through good property management, but both brand
and retention equity are influenced only by accommodating specific tenant needs
(Vissers, 2003), which tenants often find difficult to articulate (Pinder et al., 2003). CRM
can be used to identify their expectations and perceptions, through identifying keep,
push and pull factors that influence their satisfaction with the office accommodation.
Kano et al. (1984) developed a model (see Figure 1) which shows that all services and
factors will not contribute to satisfaction to the same extent. Dogge (2002) placed this
specifically in the property management context of dwellings, and it has also been
applied successfully to both products (Matzler and Hinterhuber, 1998) and services (Li,
2003). Expected factors will not heighten satisfaction much, but if not delivered they
can lower satisfaction all the more. The factors specified by a tenant help raise
satisfaction if fulfilled, or lower it when specifications are not met. The upper-right and
Managing “keep”
factors of office
tenants
45
lower-left quadrant represent keep and push factors respectively. So the expected
performance is an interacting variable in the relationship between keep, push and pull
factors and satisfaction. This is also called the (dis)confirmation paradigm (Oliver,
1980): only a small bandwidth of performance around the expected performance of
different factors will lead to customer satisfaction, which in turn leads to a different
intention to behave. A deviation of the expectation below this range will not lead to
satisfaction, no matter how outstanding the quality of the product or service might be.
Only the (unexpected) additional attractive factors lead to tenants with a very high
level of satisfaction and thus to loyalty. But since these requirements are not expected,
they are also not expressed and thus often unclear.
The most extensive listing of possible keep, push and pull factors has been made by
Pen (2002) in his dissertation. Pen identified 15 building factors, 15 company factors
and 16 external factors (see Table I). However, a landlord cannot influence all of these
factors. The building factors can be influenced most intensively, through the property
management. Most of the external factors can be considered when deciding on the
acquisition of the building for the portfolio, but they are mainly out of reach from that
moment on. The company factors and three company dependent external factors are
completely beyond control, because they are company specific. Still, all factors are
included in this study to be exhaustive and to be able to look at the relative importance
of what the landlord can do, compared to the factors that are beyond the influence of
the landlord.
The relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is very complex (Dogge and
Smeets, 2004). A tenant might not move because of reasons other than dissatisfaction
with the office, for example not having any alternative accommodation, time or money
to move. Also, a satisfied tenant can base location decisions on many aspects other
than the office and its surroundings, for example the company factors mentioned
above. Since the goal of this study is to explore keep factors, the complexity of the
satisfaction-loyalty link will be left to later studies and only the presence of a direct link
is tested here. This has led to the conceptual model used for this research (see Figure 2).
All keep, push and pull factors identified are hypothesized to influence satisfaction,
with the expected performance as an interaction variable. Satisfaction in its turn is
Figure 1.
Kano-model edited by
author
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hypothesized to increase loyalty. So all links represented by lines in the conceptual
model will be tested.
Data collection and results
The data to calculate the links in the conceptual model have been provided through
structured face-to-face interviews during a period of 16 days with tenants of two
multi-tenant office buildings in the Eindhoven region (The Netherlands) with the same
landlord. The tenants were asked to send a representative with influence on location
decisions and knowledge of building issues. Because of the very small organisation
size, this was the general manager in most cases. The response rate was 66 per cent (38
valid interviews out of 58 tenants), which is sufficient for a global statistical analysis of
the data. To control for size, which has been proven to influence office-move decisions
Building factors
a
Company factors
b
External factors
c
Appearance
a
Profit development
b
Freight facilities
c
Rental/land price
a
New management
b
Parking facilities
c
Health and safety
a
Reorganisation
b
Proximity inner-city/facilities
c
Age
a
Personnel matters
b
Quality of life
c
Too much/little m
2a
Company strategy
b
Crime rate/safety
c
Extension possibilities m
2a
Quality demands
b
Reachability
c
Internal climate/sound/light
a
Growth production/turnover
b
Nuisance by/for surroundings
c
Flexibility
a
Communication/logistics
b
Zoning plan
c
Operating costs
a
Policy on storage/supply
b
Proximity freight terminal
c
Quality of fittings
a
Savings total company costs
b
Regional labour market
c
Facility services
a
Subjective/personal goals
b
International contacts
b
Saleability
a
Efficiency company processes
b
Commuting distance
b
Maintenance state
a
Flexibility operation
b
Proximity suppliers/buyers
b
Rental contract/ownership
conditions
a
Development of production
methods
b
Representativeness
surroundings
c
Layout
a
Information and
Communication Technology
b
Environmental
policy/restraints
c
Market interest in
location/building
c
Notes:
a
Property management;
b
Out of reach;
c
Acquisition decision
Source: Pen (2002)
Table I.
Building, company and
external factors that can
be keep, push or
pull factors
Figure 2.
Conceptual model
Managing “keep”
factors of office
tenants
47
(Leishman and Watkins, 2004), multi-tenant offices have been selected because they
contain mostly small organisations (two thirds of the respondent organisations had
less than seven employees). Leishman and Watkins also showed an influence of
business type on decisions, so that was taken into account as a control variable. But the
data showed no significant influence of business type on decision making.
Building A (18 interviews) is located in the centre of Eindhoven, one of the major
office cities in The Netherlands (approx. 210,000 inhabitants), near the central train
station and the inner-city facilities. Rental level is about e125/m
2
, which is average for
Eindhoven. Several floors have been renovated recently. Building B (20 interviews) is
located in a similar environment in Helmond (approx. 85,000 inhabitants), one of the
suburbs of Eindhoven. The rental level is slightly lower then average.
Loyalty, satisfaction and expected performance have been determined on a
five-point scale, with loyalty measured as the intention to prolong the rental contract
(lease) or not. Satisfaction and expected performance have been measured for the rental
product as a whole in two separate questions. For expected performance, the
discrepancy between the actual performance and the expectations raised by the
landlord had to be valued. For all possible keep, push and pull factors identified in
Table I, a three-point scale was used to determine in two questions whether they were
currently a reason to stay or leave (keep v. push) and if they were considered to be
better in an alternative office/location (pull). Then the relative importance of each
factor as either keep or push factor and as a pull factor was sought on a five-point scale.
One pre-test was held to check the structure of the interview and the clearness of the
factors, which showed that the line of questioning was clear and valid. But during the
actual interviews a lot of questions were asked about the exact meaning of the building
factor “layout” and the company factor “Information and Communication
Technology”. Since these two factors appeared not to be sufficiently unambiguous,
they have been left out of the further analyses.
Results
All links in the conceptual model are confirmed by the data, although not all links are
very strong. The results of the data analyses are described here, starting at the left end
of the model with the factors and continuing to the right up to “loyalty”.
All identified building, company and external factors were mentioned at least once
as a keep factor (see Figure 3). Most of these factors were mentioned as a possible push
or pull factor too, including all building factors. The tenants were also asked to state
their opinion on the relative importance of a factor. But since all factors were said to be
(a little) important, this did not give much disparity to draw conclusions from, so these
data were not analysed further. Instead, the frequencies of mentioned factors were used
to draw conclusions on their relative importance.
Both buildings had tenants that were (a little) satisfied, neutral and (a little)
dissatisfied. In building A, 61 per cent was satisfied and 33 per cent dissatisfied (6 per
cent neutral). Building B showed a more even opinion, with 50 per cent and 40 per cent
respectively (10 per cent neutral). To find the link between each separate factor and
satisfaction, the results of the keep or push factor questions have been recoded. This
produced separate results if a factor was a keep factor or not and if a factor was a push
factor or not. Of the 44 factors analysed, three keep factors, seven push factors and 11
pull factors show a significant link with satisfaction (see Table II).
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When asked if the current performance met their expectations, none of the tenants gave
a neutral response. All had a definite opinion, of which 61 per cent said that
expectations were met satisfactorily and 39 per cent not satisfactorily. These groups
were spread over both buildings. For the impact of the expected performance on the
relationship between all separate factors and satisfaction, Spearman’s rho was
calculated separately for the satisfied and not satisfied group. Spearman’s Correlation
is a technique used to test the direction and strength of the relationship between two
non-parametric variables. It does not require specific frequency distributions, linear
relationships or interval scales for variables. Fisher’s Zr was used to find significant
Figure 3.
Frequency of all factors
Managing “keep”
factors of office
tenants
49
Keep factor rsPush factor rsPull factor rs
Proximity inner-city
b
0.47 0.003 Age building
a
0.46 0.005 Maintenance state
a
0.51 0.001
Flexibility building
a
0.41 0.022 Reorganisation
c
0.42 0.014 Quality demands
c
0.49 0.002
Saleability
a
0.39 0.045 Environmental policy
b
0.40 0.015 Health and safety
a
0.42 0.008
Appearance building
a
0.36 0.017 Age building
a
0.42 0.008
Maintenance
a
0.36 0.031 Growth
c
0.42 0.008
Market interest
b
0.36 0.036 Appearance building
a
0.39 0.015
Quality of fittings
a
0.35 0.039 Flexibility operation
c
0.39 0.016
Saleability
a
0.37 0.021
Quality of fittings
a
0.36 0.025
Crime rate/safety
b
0.35 0.032
Company strategy
c
0.33 0.046
Notes:
a
Property management;
b
Acquisition decision;
c
Out of reach
Table II.
Factors with significant
link with satisfaction
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differences between correlations of both groups. Fisher’s test is used in the analysis of
categorical data where sample sizes are small, to examine the significance of the
association between two variables in a 2 £2 contingency table (see Table III). Only
five factors show a different relationship with satisfaction based on whether the
expected performance was met or not.
In both buildings at least two thirds of the tenants had the intention to be loyal and
would (probably) extend their contract (Building A and B, respectively 67 per cent and
85 per cent), which is more than the percentages of satisfied tenants (respetively 61 per
cent and 50 per cent), especially for building B. Spearman’s rho was used again to
measure the link, showing that satisfaction and loyalty indeed have a link (r¼0:35,
s¼0:032), but not a very strong one, as indicated before.
Discussion
Not many (keep) factors could be linked to satisfaction, but the data analysis still
provides a lot of insight for both landlords and academics. Besides the identification of
important factors influencing tenant decision-making, the way of decision making also
shows how existing theories apply in this specific context.
Looking at Figure 3, a similarity between push and pull factors appeared to be
present, while the frequently mentioned keep factors are mostly different. Therefore
Spearman’s rho was used to see if mentioned push factors were also mentioned as pull
factors by that tenant. Of the 44 factors, 23 showed a significant relationship (s #0.05),
so more than half of the factors judged negatively (a push factor), were subsequently
also considered to be better in other offices (a pull factor). This might imply that for
office-move decisions, the distinction between push and pull factors is less relevant
than in the traditional fields where they are used.
The push/pull factors that were mentioned by more than 50 per cent of the tenants
are related to the appearance and comfort of the building; especially to the technical
state (for buildings A and B respectively: maintenance state 68 per cent-58 per cent,
quality of fittings 58 per cent-76 per cent, internal climate 42 per cent-58 per cent,
appearance 37 per cent-55 per cent). Except for the internal climate, these factors have a
significant link with satisfaction. So keeping the building up-to-date is a way of not
driving tenants to the competition, which is clearly within the control of the landlord.
These are factors that require regular investments and good planning. Notable is the
fact that these technical building factors score lowest as keep factors, so they do not
help in retaining tenants. Looking at the Kano model (Figure 1), they apparently belong
to the expected factors and cannot bring about high satisfaction levels.
Keep factors mentioned by 50 per cent or more of the respondents are extension
possibilities (55 per cent), facility services (53 per cent), flexibility (53 per cent) and too
r
1
r
2
(Satisfactory) (Not satisfactory) Zs
Keep factor Reorganisation 0.18 20.67 2.03 0.021
Profit development 20.14 0.64 2.00 0.023
Push factor Company strategy 20.42 0.52 2.26 0.012
Policy on storage 0.51 20.25 2.04 0.021
Pull factor Crime rate/safety 0.69 0.07 2.13 0.017
Table III.
Influence of expected
performance
Managing “keep”
factors of office
tenants
51
much/little net usable area (50 per cent) in the building and parking facilities (66 per
cent), proximity to the inner-city (50 per cent) and reachability (50 per cent) from the
external factors. The four building keep factors all deal with functional aspects. Dogge
(2002) discusses the work of Gro
¨nroos on different types of quality. Apparently,
functional quality is valued more subjectively than technical quality. This could mean
that for keep factors the brand equity and retention equity are more important than for
push/pull factors. That would make CRM even more relevant for retaining tenants
than for attracting new ones. On the other hand, only two of these keep factors could be
linked to satisfaction (Table II), which does not support the implicit idea of keep factors
improving loyalty.
Additionally, the important keep factors are hard to change by the landlord. Once
the building has been acquired, it is not easy to change flexibility or the amount of net
useable area. Only the facility services are easier to influence by trying to add services,
that according to the Kano-model, are attractive and unexpected and therefore elevate
satisfaction. The advantage of the two buildings studied is that they are both
multi-tenant buildings. The possibility to move tenants around adds to flexibility,
which leads to satisfaction. The external keep factors linked to satisfaction are mostly
set when the building has been chosen; especially the proximity to the inner-city, which
was the only one linked with satisfaction.
To determine that not all factors are specifically either a keep factor or a push/pull
factor no statistic analysis was necessary. Table IV shows all factors that were
mentioned by more than 25 per cent of the tenants, if averaged (“mean”) for push, pull
and keep factor frequencies. This is only the case if a factor scores very high as either a
keep, push or pull factor or fairly high as all three types of factors. The factors with a
high standard deviation of this average are clearly either a keep factor or a push/pull
factor. The factors with a low standard deviation were mentioned often for all three
categories of factors. Apparently, the tenants had very different perceptions of these
factors, although they were the same for all of them. So the quality/performance of
these factors (at the top of Table IV, e.g. representativeness of the surrounding) was for
some tenants a reason to stay, while others looked upon them negatively as a reason to
leave. As could be seen in Table III, an influence of the expected performance is hardly
proven, so that cannot be the reason for this difference in perception. There must be
Frequencies
Keep factor Push/pull factor Mean SD
Representativeness surroundings 13 12/14 13 1.0
Saleability 7 11/12 10 2.6
Crime rate/safety 8 13/13 11.3 2.9
Appearance 11 14/21 15.3 5.1
Reachability 19 9/12 13.3 5.1
Rental/land price 18 4/9 10.3 7.1
Too much/little m
2
19 6/4 9.7 8.1
Facility services 20 4/6 10 8.7
Internal climate/sound/light 4 16/22 14 9.1
Parking facilities 25 4/6 11.7 11.6
Quality of fittings 2 22/26 16.7 12.9
Maintenance state 2 26/22 16.7 12.9
Table IV.
Frequencies of factors
mentioned on average by
more than 25 per cent of
the tenants
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other things influencing the perception of tenants, which could be many (Pinder et al.,
2003).
The (dis)confirmation paradigm is not supported by the data. The impact of the
expected performance on the link between the individual factors and satisfaction is
marginal (only five factors) and appears to be random. But since all tenants had an
opinion on whether expected performance was met or not, it still seems something to
take account of. Therefore, an additional analysis was done, looking for a possible
direct link between the expected performance and satisfaction. This showed a very
strong direct correlation (r¼0:64; s¼0:001), indicating that satisfaction with the
actual performance of the office does depend a lot on the expected performance
directly. Customer intimacy gives more insight in to the expectations of a tenant and
might help soften the edges of discrepancies with the actual performance.
The behavioural location theory on subjective factors influencing decision-making
is supported by these data in several ways. First, possible keep factors (e.g. appearance
of the building) can change quickly into push factors, because different tenants do not
have the same perception of their performance. Second, the fact that many push factors
are also pull factors; for example, a tenant does not know if the maintenance or quality
of fittings at another office is better, but assumes its quality because of dissatisfaction
with the building in use. And third, the direct link of satisfaction with expected
performance. This subjectivity makes good CRM important to keep satisfaction at such
a level that it invokes loyalty. The landlord can use CRM to increase the “retention
equity” mentioned before, which might keep the perception of several factors positive
too (“brand equity”).
Conclusions and recommendations for further research
Based on the data from these two buildings, the important push/pull factors all seem to
be building factors, and therefore will be receptive to the influence of a landlord.
Important keep factors seem to belong both to the building and the surroundings. So to
keep possible future tenants, a landlord should also think about the surroundings when
acquiring a building to lease out. Investments in improvement of specifically these
important factors should be much more effective, than improving several factors that
are hardly mentioned.
Since this was an exploratory study, much research remains to be done. First of all,
the study should be repeated on a larger scale. The choice of the two buildings in the
sample might heavily influence the results, especially the relative importance of the
factors. In addition, the potential to use more powerful statistical analyses provides the
opportunity to include different types of tenants and different geographical regions.
Perhaps there are some tenant-specific aspects that influence which factors they
consider important and/or how they relate to their satisfaction. For example, this study
used multi-tenant buildings, that presumes relatively small companies, which might
still be young and thus find flexibility very important. More mature tenants, with
demands for more net useable area, might have different keep, push and pull factors.
The extension into several different regions could give more insight in the list of
external location factors that are important.
Besides the matter of the sample used, the factors themselves could be researched
more thoroughly too. First, longitudinal research would be interesting to see if factors
indeed can transform into each other. Does a keep factor become a push factor in time,
Managing “keep”
factors of office
tenants
53
and does a push factor increase the susceptibility to pull factors of the competition?
Also, the state of the market can be incorporated as a variable in longitudinal research,
to see if it is of influence. Second, the possible subjectivity of keep factors compared to
push/pull factors, by extending the work of Gro
¨nroos as mentioned in the discussion,
needs more research to confirm if this is true. Also it would be interesting to study if
subjective factors might be mentioned less often, because tenants are less aware that
they base their decisions on them. Third, possibly the relative weight of the different
factors could be determined with different methods than just asking tenants for it. And
last, the factors “layout” and “ICT” should be operationalised into more unambiguous
definitions to be included in future studies.
The other variables in the conceptual model are also not completely determined yet.
More insight into satisfaction and how to deliver it might be reached by dividing it into
several subsets. Possibly it is only a specific subset of satisfaction aspects that is
influenced by some factors, and that other factors influence another subset. The effect
of the expected performance in all this also needs more research, because it could not be
confirmed with the data of this study.
Lastly, the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty needs more attention.
Loyalty does not stem straight from satisfaction, so probably many variables influence
this link. Creating value is, however, the only steering instrument landlords have to
create satisfied customers (Dogge and Smeets, 2004). Dogge and Smeets also mention
for dwellings that the link satisfaction-loyalty is stronger for tenants with a short
relationship with their landlord. Almost one third of the office tenants in this study
have been renting their office space for less than two years and another one third less
than four years, but the link was still weak. Repeating the study with tenants with a
longer relationship with their landlord might demonstrate no relationship with loyalty
at all, because they might have stayed for very different reasons than satisfaction (e.g.
no alternatives).
To conclude, the landlord can use the interviews held for this study as a CRM
instrument. It provides the necessary insight in factors that are considered to be
positive and the ones that need extra management attention. Also it shows tenants the
landlords’ involvement and that their needs are considered, which might increase the
relationship and thus the ‘retention equity’. A word of caution is however, that such
instruments might raise expectations that cannot be fulfilled. If a tenant is asked about
aspects that were never intended to be improved or cannot be improved, this might
affect the satisfaction level (and maybe loyalty) through the strong direct link of
expected performance with satisfaction and the theory underlying the Kano-model.
Complying with needs specified in interviews raises satisfaction to a higher level than
just providing the expected performance. So, a good relationship with the tenant will
help obtain the necessary insight to manage the office building better.
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Corresponding author
Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek can be contacted at:: h.a.j.a.appel@tue.nl
Managing “keep”
factors of office
tenants
55
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