Since 1960, along with the dramatical increase of economical development of Korea, the demand on real estate holdings have been increasing and become diversified. As of the growing demands, the importance of real estate in national economy has been growing gradually and because of this phenomenon the real estate market has been rapidly expanded. The importance of property on real estate in household economy of Korea is higher than other countries. Also according to 1) the growing interests on real estate holdings for the realization of portfolio with the currency, 2) integration of real estate and financial market, and 3) the increase in real estate transactions, the need of authenticity, transparency, and stability of brokerage on real estate is growing. Therefore, it is required 1) to reconsider the competitiveness of real estate brokerage in Korea as of the globalization in real estate market, 2) to expand business area of real estate brokerage, and 3) to become bigger and specializing the real estate service.
The research concluded that the improvement of service quality of real estate brokers is required in a point of view above, and hence tried to find how 'Service Quality' of real estate brokers affect on 'Customer satisfaction' and how customer satisfaction affects 'behavior after the consumption' by actual proof analysis.
Various researches on service quality have been preceded from 'SERVQUAL Model'(Parasuraman et al., 1985a, 1985b, 1988a, 1988b, 1991, 1994) of Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (PZB), and 'SERVPERF Model' (Cronin et al., 1992, 1994) by Cronin and Taylor and 'Evaluated Performance Model' (Teas, 1993, 1994) by Teas, who criticized 'SERVQUAL Model'. These researches suggested the measuring means on service quality and positively proved. However, as we cannot conclude it to be used in every field of service industry, researches were proceeded by readjusting measuring means in accordance with the scholar, type of service, or the environment.
In 1980, the research on customer satisfaction focused more on defining, suggesting the measuring means, and satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and complaining behavior of 'customer satisfaction' related to the establishment of public policy than scientific interests. Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory, Attribution Theory, Equity Theory, and Theory of Performance were the major theories on customer satisfaction built in this period of time. The sequence and relevance between service quality and customer satisfaction diversifies among scholars. However, most of them find service quality as preceding variation to customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction affects more on the behavior after consumption (revisiting intention, word of mouth, and behavior on complaining) than service quality.
Recently, interest in service marketing from industry is rapidly growing, as service area is acquiring more attention. Professionals such as lawyers, judicial scriveners, certified public accountants, doctors, and certified public brokers are also in need of introduction of service marketing in their field. Professionals are usually an enterprise depending on human resources of one or a combination of few workers helping professional. As professionals are also forced out in a limitless competition in accordance with the development and changes of society, the improvement of service quality is an important subject for growth and survival.
Real estate market, represented by real estate broker, is suffering from excessive production of real estate broker, excessive opening of business by small-scale brokers, and excessive competition. In a circumstance where opening of real estate market has brought big foreign real estate companies and making inroads into the domestic market, our real estate market cannot even outstretch the policy for the development of brokerage because of the government's control on speculation. Thus, the division of real estate services provides dissatisfactory services result in frequent occurrence of brokerage mistakes, and the brokerage industry is still practicing with a rough estimation. Hence, a broker should find the way to occupy predominant position in a competition to survive and obtain a profit by upgrading services. Accordingly, it is very important to improve service quality to have customers to revisit, maximize word of mouth, and minimize the loss from the behavior on complaining through customer satisfaction.
In this research, based on previous studies, we proceeded our research by dividing service quality into three different levels, physical environment quality (external facilities, conveniency), process quality (professionalism, kindness), and outcome quality (authenticity, accomplishments).
We summarized our study in five categories. First, it showed that physical environment quality (external facilities, conveniency), process quality (professionalism, kindness), and outcome quality (authenticity, accomplishments) all have affection on customer satisfaction. This result means that service quality attentively affects on customer satisfaction also in real estate brokerage. Second, conveniency has effected the most in customer satisfaction among three service quality sectors, conveniency, authenticity, and kindness. This shows that the location of an office affects the most on customer satisfaction and consequently the location of broker's office is the most important factor to draw customers. Third, it appeared that customer satisfaction affects on revisiting intention and word of mouth, and it affected more on revisiting intention. Fourth, it came out that dissatisfaction of customer affects the behavior on complaining, but the intensity of behavior on complaining in case of dissatisfaction to satisfaction was weak. Behavior on complaining showed strong negative correlation on professionalism, kindness, and revisiting intention, and it suggests the professionalism and kindness of the broker should be strengthened. Fifth, customer satisfaction is higher when it is middle sized (33 to 66m²) with 4 to 5 employees in a broker's office. Hence, it suggests brokers to examine to run their offices in appropriate size. Also, it shows that satisfaction goes up when customers visit and get counseling in 2 to 5 broker's offices. Meanwhile, the critical point of this research and a proposal for succeeding studies are as follows. First, we limited our research only to the customer who used broker's office within five years in Pusan area, and surveyed only in the office and on a street, which could be hardly generalized. The following studies should expand their survey to various subjects and areas. Second, as this research was based on previous studies, there could be an existence of quality variation that was not managed on this research. Third, the behavior on complaining in accordance with customer satisfaction through the correlation analysis showed the strong negative correlation in professionalism and kindness of service quality. Therefore, we see it necessary to study and analyze in depth related to the behavior on complaining. Fourth, even though we got a result of having middle sized (33 to 66 m²) office with 4 to 5 employees in a broker's office is desirable, we consider that there could be a reason to obstruct to supersize broker's office. Therefore the study on how to supersize broker's office is necessary.