By: Ravi Sinha
Track2Realty Exclusive: One mistake that the Indian realtors have been doing is to go for a cheap and easy way to establish brand recognition is through technology, especially popular mediums like blogs, Facebook and Twitter, which help them build relationship with their clients.
But as firms realize that social media can have both benefits and drawbacks, they are taking steps to control how customer feedback on the open forum is to be dealt with. Online Reputation Management (ORM) has thus evolved as a serious mode of brand management for the sector where consumer confidence is low and trust deficit high.
From a consumer point of view, this survey is an attempt to find out whether ‘brand’ of a real estate company really matters to the buyers. More importantly, how much premium a developer charges for his brand reputation and whether the buyers are ready to pay that much premium for the brand? Whether they differentiate between the project’s USP vis-à-vis the real estate company’s brand reputation?
Though the premium that the developers charge for their brand reputation depends on the given market, what can be vouchsafed is that consumers are more concerned about the reputation of the developer in delivering the project, than ‘brand’ in the true sense of the term.
There is a thin line that consumers often fail to differentiate the builders’ reputation and the developers’ brand. Indian real estate definitely does not have a Louis Vuitton or Gucci for now, even though super luxury segment is trying its best to rope in internationally acceptable brands in its projects to remain relevant as a brand.
