Analysis of the current housing market in Colombo metro region to enhance the prospective consumer satisfaction

Abstract

Housing is an essential element of social development. One consumer may purchase such a house once for his/her entire lifetime. Therefore, when making a housing purchasing decision, it is intensively explored more than it is considered in purchasing other consumable products. Property developer has the responsibility of understanding the consumer behaviour. The main research problem is the lack of attention towards the analysis of the current housing market of the Colombo Metro region from the consumer perspective. An extensive literature synthesis was carried out to gather information on the general attributes of the housing market and determinants of housing supply. Furthermore, investigation on the housing demand and consumer behaviour reference to Colombo Metro region were conducted through the literature synthesis. Subsequently, case studies and a survey have been adopted to proceed with the study following the mixed research approach. Semi-structured interviews for case studies and questionnaire survey were employed as the primary data collection. The primary data analysis was conducted through manual content analysis, Relative Important Index (RII) techniques and elementary statistical analysis. The findings revealed, how the prospective consumers are considering Person, Product, Place, Price related factors when purchasing a residential property. For an example this research discovered that quick access to Colombo is the highly considered fact by the consumers. It revealed that the consumer behaviour in Colombo Metro region is different from other contexts. Therefore, carrying out a study to analyse the current housing will be very important to maximize the consumer satisfaction in house purchasing.