The Business Mode of Cmmercial Education Centers : Factors that Potential Customers Care about and Profitability of a Real Project

Abstract: Commercial education center is a new business mode that has just appeared in Chinese real estate market in recent years. It is directly derived from the business mode of shopping malls. While the shopping mall gathers a variety of service facilities and retail stores in a building or area and provides consumers with comprehensive services, the commercial education center gathers for-profit education institutions to provide customers with centralized education services. Because this business mode is quite new in Chinese real estate market, there are very few relevant researches. Real estate developers need to understand potential customers’ concern for the commercial education centers to improve their satisfaction, and they also need conclusions about the profitability of this business mode. This thesis carried out unstructured interviews on six families and four institution educators with different conditions, investigated their concerns about commercial education centers and summarized their opinions into 15 factors. A questionnaire is designed based on these factors and crucial factors in previous researches that affects customers' satisfaction for shopping malls. Then the questionnaire survey is conducted in a larger scope (369 respondents). Finally, with the help of a local real estate company, DCF analysis is conducted on a real commercial education center project. Three scenarios including most likely, optimistic and pessimistic are considered during this process. The results of unstructured interviews reveal factors that affects customers' satisfaction for the commercial education centers. The Results of the questionnaire survey shows the order of importance of these factors. According to the DCF model, the internal rate of return of this project meets the requirement of the company under the most likely situation and the optimistic situation.