Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1
Online Marketing Technological Dependencies (Ranchhod et al.
2001
)
Searching,
browsing,
capabilities
Posting,
hosting,
presentation
capabilities
Communication
capabilities
Transaction,
security,
and monitoring
capabilities
Marketing
research
Highly
dependence
Advertising,
branding
Highly
dependence
Customer relations,
public relations
Highly
dependence
Selling and
distribution
Highly
dependence
Decades ago property information such as location-based data were recorded
and displayed on thousands of maps. Computer technology converts this infor-
mation into digital format and shares it virtually on the web. However, the
capability of current property marketing system has been stagnant as textual
information, graphic images of property and location maps which have led to some
spatial properties such as topographic conditions, neighbouring built environment
and the property physical properties remain hidden.
GIS technology transpired to cater for the growing need of spatial data han-
dling. With the emergence of current GIS technology such as enabling 3D visu-
alization and analyses, GIS web server and cloud computing, compiling GIS
functions through web-based sharing services is made possible. A matrix that can
illustrate the relationship and dependency between marketing activities and
technology which shows several issues that need to be tackled during the devel-
opment of online information system is identified and reported (Ranchhod et al.
2001
) (Table
1
).
The introduction of GIS technology in property management information sys-
tem has enabled users to handle large spatial data and improve the system effi-
ciency (Qian
2013
). GIS technology is typically implemented in property
management when the property management system is designed to support geo-
graphical information (Ralphs and Wyatt
2003
). Evidence and justification of
insufficiencies in the existing information systems to handle spatial information
were identified by several authors (Jitka and Renata
2006
; Zlatanova and Tempfli
2000
; Louwsma et al.
2006
).
As technology has improved rapidly, many potential modernizations in the
aspect of system display and communication can be found. The main improvement
criteria that are most valuable for information system are virtual reality (VR), 3D
visualization, 3D GIS and web-enable. VR GIS is a combination of VR technology
and GIS where VR plays the role as the main interface and interaction method
(Faust
1995
). VR technology has been widely used in tourism (Guttentag
2010
)
and urban and regional planning (Ma et al.
2008
; Ma et al.
2010
). Integrating GIS,
virtual reality and web-based applications increased the system complexity. Thus,
