Bucking e‐commerce trends: A content analysis comparing commercial real estate brokerage and residential real estate brokerage websites
Abstract
The real estate industry is an e‐commerce anomaly. Although the overall growth of ecommerce is driven by the business‐to‐business sector, the majority of real estate e‐commerce is derived from its retail‐oriented residential sector. This study examines the structure of residential and commercial real estate websites, with the goal of determining whether some patterns of content might increase the quality and quantity of information available to buyers and sellers thereby contributing to the disparity between residential and commercial real estate e‐commerce growth. The results of the research show residential real estate websites offer richer informational content than commercial real estate websites. No significant differences are found for the user friendliness and functionality (ie ancillary services) provided by residential and commercial real estate websites.
Keywords
Citation
Henderson, K.V. and Cowart, L.B. (2002), "Bucking e‐commerce trends: A content analysis comparing commercial real estate brokerage and residential real estate brokerage websites", Journal of Corporate Real Estate, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 375-385. https://doi.org/10.1108/14630010210811967
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited