Gråzoner inom fastighetsmäklarbranschen : en studie om vad som anses etiskt ur ett kundperspektiv

Sammanfattning: Title: Gray areas in the real estate brokerage industry - a study of what is considered ethical from a customer perspective. Level: Bachelor's degree in business administration Authors: Maximilian Eriksson and Elias Swartswe Supervisor: Lars-Johan Åge Date: 2023 – May Aim: The aim of this study is to examine the gray area between practices in the real estate profession that are legal versus illegal, yet perceived as unethical versus ethical by clients. Selected sub-research questions are as follows: Do customers consider certain actions to be unethical even though it is permitted? Do customers consider that certain actions are ethical even though it is not allowed?  Method: The choice of method fell on a qualitative study where data has been collected with semi-structured interviews where the respondents have answered questions about various scenarios about the actions of real estate agents. The respondents are evenly distributed across both genders and different ages and have sold/bought via real estate agents in the last three years. Results and conclusions: The conclusion of the study can be summed up as that ethics is highly individual but that some things could still be deduced, such as that in most cases customers were okay with unethical behavior by the real estate agent in cases where there was no risk to themselves, but also that there are too low demands on the estate agent as the customers felt that even though the estate agent did nothing wrong, he should’ve acted better. Contribution of the thesis: Through this study, real estate agents gain a valuable insight into how customers think about various ethical issues in the industry and can thus act accordingly. Suggestions for further research: It is advantageous to lock in one or more age ranges to get more specific differences, while at the same time it is possible to do a broader study that possibly has more time and respondents available. Keywords: Sales, ethics, sales ethics, real estate agent.