Customers’ Intention towards Purchasing Apartment in Dhaka City, Bangladesh: Offering an Alternative Buying Intention Model

Abstract

Various models and theories have been proposed to explain customers’ buying attitude, buying intention and behavior. Taking a new approach this study has applied the theory of planned behavior to explain buying intention in context of Real Estate especially on apartment buying behavior. This study has aimed at exploring the antecedents of customers’ buying attitude and investigating the impact of customers’ buying attitude on buying intention. A questionnaire survey method has been used with 275 customers and response rate of 86.18 percent. Initially an Exploratory Factor Analysis has been directed using SPSS (Version 21).We have explored six factors project facilities, environmental issues, location and communication, physical quality, promotion and prices that act as antecedents of customers’ buying attitude. After that, CFA has been carried out to confirm the factors. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) has been used to test both the proposed model and hypothesized relationships among the constructs. It is found that project facilities, location and communication, physical quality and prices have significant impact on customers’ buying attitude except the environmental issues and promotion. It is also found that buying intention is strongly influenced by buying attitude of the customers. The proposed model also has an acceptable fit to the data. Real Estate developers, marketers, policy makers can use the findings to better understand, segment and satisfy the customers. Therefore the findings of the study will definitely help in building customer based brand equity and customer loyalty particularly in Real Estate (Apartment Market)  to gain competitive advantages as well as achieve sustainable development of the sector. The study may be limited by its focus on a geographic section of the Bangladeshi Real Estate market. 

Keywords: Buyers’ attitude, Buying intention, Buying intention model, Real estate, Real estate marketing.