A comparative study of the customer’s satisfaction on shopping center under various management model in Hong Kong

Abstract

Link REIT namely Link Real Estate Investment Trust (Previously known as ‘The Link’) is still undoubtedly a hot topic for political parties and the public nowadays. When Hong Kong Government first sold 151 public shopping centres including carparks to Link in the year 2004s, up until the year 2014s, when Link started to sell the properties through tendering system. The public is still urging the Hong Kong Government to repurchase the assets. Although it has been widely reported in the media, Link was still participating in the exercise of ‘Asset enhancement works’ which they started to acquire private properties within the Hong Kong in 2011s and within China in 2014s. It has risen the awareness to the public that Link has differed to its original concept of managing the public shopping centers and begun to become a property developer which focuses on profit making purposes. In the year 2017s, there are still noises from the public whether Hong Kong Government should repurchase Link so that the shop tenants and public estate residents will not further suffer from the high level of rent and consumer prices. However, previous research shown that privatization of shopping centers could enhance the customer satisfaction level. In view of that, privatization of public shopping centers could possibly generate a positive outcome. On the other hand, contract out management of public shopping centres has become more popular for Hong Kong Housing Authority recently. HKHA results shown that PMA is more cost-effectives and efficient in management comparing to direct management; as such, this paper will find out which type of management model gives out a higher level of customer satisfactions by collecting data through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. By cross section comparison, the hypothesis of the study suggests that contract out management by the HKHA will give similar customer’s satisfactions level in comparison to privatization. In this regards, government should consider to continuous such practice in the future rather than selling out the public properties to avoid the dispute as well as losing public assets.