Tenant office space (TOS) preference framework for purpose-built office buildings in Kuala Lumpur city centre / Yasmin Mohd Adnan

• Main Author: Yasmin, Mohd Adnan
• Format: Thesis
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: TH Building construction
• Online Access: http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5647/1/Yasmin_%2D_Appendix_E_July_2012_Final.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5647/2/Yasmin%2D_Appendix_C_July_2012__Final.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5647/3/Yasmin_%2DAppendix_D_July_2012_Final.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5647/4/Yasmin_FRONT_PAGE_Final.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5647/5/Yasmin_Main_Content_July_2012_Final.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5647/6/Yasmin_Table_of_Content_July_2012_Final.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5647/
• Institution: Universiti Malaya

In a market where office space faces an oversupply and a decentralisation to the suburbs, it is imperative to examine and analyse the various factors that influence the decision making of office occupiers, particularly of tenants within the Kuala Lumpur city centre. Understanding tenants’ criteria in their office occupation decisions would assist office space providers, managers and marketing agents in a meaningful way towards the latters’ aims of return maximisation and vacancy minimisation. In this study, a multi-criteria decision making method (MCDM), in particular the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) procedure, was employed to develop a tool for assessing tenants office space preferences. The preliminary stage of this study has endeavoured to identify the important factors in tenant office space decision making for Kuala Lumpur from a more general perspective. Through the experts’ opinions, sixty (60) important factors were identified. During the main stage of the study, tenants survey was used to confirm as well as to reduce the factors found in the preliminary stage, working on top-grade office buildings in Kuala Lumpur city centre. The results of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Importance Index reduced the factors to twenty six (26) most important factors. When the AHP procedure was used to determine the factors’ relative preference weights for three (3) main tenant sectors i.e. Finance/Banking, ICT & Media and Oil & Gas, the findings revealed that the tenants have different preferences for the factors while a few factors showed significant differences when inter-sector comparisons were made. The relative weights of the factors obtained for the three (3) categories of tenants were then adopted to develop a decision aid framework to identify the most suitable tenant sector for office space with given set of attributes within the Kuala Lumpur city centre. The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the office market in several ways. First, the framework distinguishes the preferences of the different tenant sectors for the identified factors. Along with the measures for the identified factors, this framework will assist the stakeholders of ‘to be leased’ office space to identify suitable tenants to offer the space. Second, the findings of the study can be used as a guide to future office providers of the important criteria for consideration prior to the development stage so as not to exacerbate the oversupply of office space in the city centre of Kuala Lumpur.