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.
