Digital Platforms and Real Estate Industry during COVID-19

Abstract

Real estate is one of the industries that have been most affected by COVID-19. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that affect customer use of New Zealand's real estate digital platforms. Trade Me and realestate.co.nz are the two most popular real estate digital platforms with the most significant number of homebuyers in New Zealand. This study uses the reviews on the two platforms from 2018 to 2021. There are a total of 1349 customer reviews on the two platforms, which represent the total population. A sample of 113 reviews from the realestate.co.nz platform and 113 reviews from the Trade Me platform are used for analysis. The findings show that perceived ease of use and usefulness, and information and system quality are the four main factors that affect the willingness of customers to use real estate digital platforms. After the spread of the pandemic, the impact of these factors on customer adoption of the platforms has been reduced. Therefore, the results of this study will be helpful in formulating and developing a digital marketing strategy for the New Zealand real estate industry in the post-pandemic era.