An analysis on buying behaviour of purchasing residential houses in Northern Province, Sri Lanka

This research work addresses determinants of housing consumer behavior. In order to study the consumer behavior of buying residential houses, the researchers conducted such topic from the consumers’ perspectives in Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Further, it is expected, especially, to identify the determinants of the consumer behavior, to rate them in terms of importance, and to compare the relative importance of the determinants among different market segments. There are three main objectives of this study. First, to study the external influences, namely culture, government policies, technological and marketing activities on consumer behavior on purchasing Residential houses. Second, to study how internal influences such as personal, psychological, social, self concept and Lifestyle influence commercial house buyers. Finally, to understand the decision making process of buyers of commercial houses. The researcher designed convenience sampling method to design questionnaires to study 261 houses buyers in urban areas of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Multiple regression analysis was used in testing the hypotheses. According to the analysis, all the independent variables are simultaneously significant to the dependent variable which is the consumer houses-buying behavior. Though, all the eleven variables just can explain 35.9% of the variations under consumer house-buying behavior with an R square value of 0.359. This study found that respondents would significantly adopt the main constructs when buying residential houses.