Factors affecting Vietnamese consumers' intention to buy apartments in medium-sized cities: research in Hai Phong
How to develop the apartments to meet the needs of the people, creating a modern civilized city is a big problem for the city government and real estate traders. Therefore, this article aims to: (1) Understand the characteristics of the condominium market in Vietnamese cities and the people's intention to buy condominiums; (2) Analysis of factors affecting the people's intention to buy apartments in urban areas such as Hai Phong city; (3) Proposing a number of solutions to develop apartment complexes to meet people's requirements. The data and information for the article were collected by the survey method, surveying people in need of housing in Hai Phong city.
Researching the intention to choose an apartment building is important for real estate marketing and modern urban development in our country. Because consumer buying behavior is so complex, it is difficult to have a single model or theory that can fully explain consumer buying decisions. The process of forming an intention to buy a condominium is a complicated process, so it is not possible to fully and accurately explain all the factors affecting the intention to buy condominiums of people living in urban areas. the average market size like Hai Phong.
1. Characteristics of housing market and development trend of apartment buildings in middle urban areas Vietnam is in the process of industrialization, modernization and strong urbanization. Urban areas are constantly expanding and developing. According to the overall planning orientation for development of Vietnam's urban system up to 2025 and a vision to 2050 approved by the Government
Approved in Decision No. 445 / QD-TTg: In 2015, the forecast of urban nationwide rate is 38%, in 2020 is 45%, 50% by 2025. Therefore, the demand for housing in urban areas in the coming years is huge and growing fast. There is a direct relationship between urbanization and housing demand. Because housing is a basic human need, as a country becomes more urbanized, it will need to have more houses to accommodate the growing population in urban centers. The demand for housing in urban areas arises from a natural and mechanical population increase along with a change in household structure. In addition, the increase in housing demand is due to the need to improve the quality of life and increase the average housing area per capita. Urban embellishment, widening roads, building social infrastructure also need housing funds for site clearance and resettlement.
Vietnam's real estate market is still growing strongly, but the imbalance between supply and demand in many market segments is still very large, the competition in the real estate business is becoming fierce. In order to maintain their position in a competitive market, real estate marketers must keep in mind that people's buying behavior always takes high care and requires complex decision-making processes. Buying an apartment is a very important decision for every customer, because sometimes customers have to save money in the long run to be able to afford an apartment.
In big cities like Hanoi and TP. Ho Chi Minh City - where the population is very concentrated and the land fund is very limited, the apartments are mushrooming. Condominium housing funds provide a growing market across all segments from affordable to high-end. Buying and living in apartments is becoming an indispensable trend of urban people. However, in medium-sized cities such as Hai Phong - where land bank is plentiful, buying and living in apartment buildings is not the main trend.
However, these cities in the near future will also encounter real estate supply and demand imbalances like big cities. Therefore, it is necessary to attract people to buy apartments and live in apartments in medium cities, meeting urbanization requirements in the near future. The success of real estate marketing depends on properly analyzing the buying behavior of real estate customers; understand the factors that affect customers when they decide to buy an apartment. To attract customers, ensure customer satisfaction and the sustainable development of apartment projects need to analyze buying behavior and customer attitudes. However, the reality is that there are too few studies evaluating attitudes and intentions of Vietnamese consumers in the context of urbanization in medium-sized cities like Hai Phong. Therefore, this article focuses on understanding the attitude and intention to purchase condominium apartments of consumers in Hai Phong; What factors will people consider when planning to buy an apartment. The study also explores the attributes and factors that affect attitudes toward condominium apartments and the intention to buy condominiums to live in. Understanding the factors affecting the intention to buy an apartment is important for real estate traders, developers, developers and locators. Understanding the factors that influence customers' intention to buy condominiums will directly help in developing marketing strategies and policies to attract customers to buy apartments.
2. Theoretical basis for factors affecting consumers' intention to buy apartments
Consumer behavior is "the behavior that consumers perform in finding, buying, using, evaluating and processing products, services and ideas that they think will meet their needs." . The buying decision process of consumers is very complicated. Understanding consumers' buying behavior is not easy, because, often, consumers themselves do not know exactly what will affect their buying process (Kotler & Armstrong, 2005). Buying houses of consumers is a special buying behavior, which is even more complicated because the characteristics of houses are products of great value, the decision to buy is especially important.
Buying a home is one of the most important economic decisions for people of all walks of life, so buyers often require and collect a lot of information about features, quality, facilities, design, price and surroundings, etc. Up to now, there have been many studies to explore the characteristics of apartment buying behavior and the factors that affect onions. en this. An intention to purchase is an indication of a person's willingness to purchase, and it is considered a direct premise of buying behavior. Intention is a sign of consent to the conduct of human behavior and it is a direct premise of the behavior. Intention to buy is a dependent variable influenced by the attitude towards the product. Therefore, in case of buying an apartment, the intention to buy an apartment is the premise of the buying decision. A study of factors influencing purchase intent will also identify important factors affecting condominium purchase behavior. Factors affecting the intention to buy an apartment can be divided into groups, including:
- Cultural and social factors
- Psychological factors and individual consumers
- Factors reflecting the value of an apartment building to consumers.
The decision-making process of buying real estate of consumers also goes through 5 stages like the process of buying other valuable goods. In particular, when buyers want to buy real estate, they will be interested in finding all relevant information, including quality factors of apartment buildings with specific factors such as location, surrounding environment. surrounding or the development of infrastructure ... The theory of consumer behavior has also studied the factors affecting the behavior of buying real estate. The behavior of buying a house depends on a multitude of factors, including the consumers themselves, the external environment as well as factors of the real estate business's marketing activities. Homebuyers often have a need to search for complete and accurate information about a product during the decision to buy a property. A number of studies have also shown that decisions about individual household locations are
often strongly influenced by local public administration services and the cost of community participation.
The buying behavior theory has also explored property buyers' preferences regarding location and factors that influence the choice of an apartment. Real estate buyers are interested in assessing the key factors that influence the decision to choose an apartment location: budget, residential environment and transportation and communications facilities.
3. Factors affecting the intention to buy condominiums of the average urban citizen in Vietnam (research in Hai Phong)
The survey results about the intention to buy apartments and the factors affecting the intention to buy apartments of people in Hai Phong city have made the following major findings. - A significant proportion of people in Hai Phong intend to buy an apartment to live (52%). More and more people want to own apartments and seek to buy apartments instead of buying real estate. Demand and trends to buy apartments are gradually developing. Due to the rapid pace of urbanization, land scarcity and high land prices, the risk of high land purchases, complicated red book procedures, the tendency to split households into households Small scale and high price of construction materials, some significant changes happening in real estate industry have changed the attitude of housing of urban people. Especially the families of civil servants and young people prefer to buy available apartments rather than buying land to build their own houses. That is why people turn to buy apartments of real estate companies investing in apartments. To assess the impact of the factors on the intention to buy apartments of people in Hai Phong city, we focused on understanding four key groups of factors: cultural changes, land issues. , urbanization and population pressures and ultimately the factors that provide value to the residents of the apartment complex, including quality, services, environment and price. These groups of factors influence attitudes toward customers' apartments and thereby their buying intent.
* Cultural changes
Culture is a collection of values, beliefs, concepts, rules, ethics and customs that are transmitted and shared in a given society. Culture is the driving force behind consumer behavior. Cultural changes are taking place as Vietnamese people tend to live alone, enjoy culture, desire apartments with modern facilities and equipment, ... Cultural changes lead to changes that have revolutionary in real estate business. The main changes are from single family to nuclear family (household restructuring into single family unit), Western culture, increasing tendency to be single in urban areas. together increased demand for apartments. In particular, cultural changes such as household restructuring into single family units, Western culture, intending to be single; apartment culture, demand for comfort; Standard and safe services in the apartment are strongly impacting on Hai Phong people's intention to buy apartments.
* Land issues for urban housing development
We know the demand for housing in urban areas is increasing but the land area is fixed. Because land is fixed, land prices are skyrocketing. Therefore, people hesitate when buying land to build houses. Consumers are looking to developers and sellers of apartments to buy an apartment. Many land-related reasons include lack of land; risks in land purchase; high cost of land registration; high land prices; Lack of knowledge of land ownership procedures has changed the attitude of consumers towards condominiums and promoted the intention to buy condominiums.
* Urbanization and population pressure
The population growth rate in Hai Phong city is going strong. The speed of urbanization is increasing rapidly, leading to a rapid increase in the demand for accommodation in the inner city. There is a direct link between the rate of urbanization and the rate of increase in housing demand. The population growth in Hai Phong creates a great potential for the housing business. Factors that strongly influence the intention to buy a condominium are: rapid population growth, rapid urban development; pressures of increasing urbanization and employment in urban areas; Good educational institutions in urban areas are creating opportunities for apartment projects. Homebuyers are also affected by government administrative services at residential locations. The quality of living environment around apartment buildings is also an important factor leading to the decision to buy apartments of households. Of course, the quality of the living environment depends on the management capacity of the urban government.
* Impact factors belong to apartment projects
There are many factors that affect the intention of buying apartments for people living in medium-sized cities like Hai Phong to be factors associated with the value of apartment buildings for them. Location, residential environment, near the workplace, near educational institutions, close relatives living in the same area, near main roads, affordable prices, quality of urban services and service cost, area and quality of the apartment. These factors are the main factors that not only form the intention to buy an apartment but also motivate the choice and decision to buy a real apartment. Of course, the order of these factors for the average urban dweller - where land prices are still relatively low, is not the same as people living in big cities - where land prices are already very high.
- Quality of construction design and types of apartments, dimensions, security, equipment, interior design, ventilation, location, appropriate service facilities (timely delivery, maintenance of quality) quality, after-sales service), convenient transportation (transportation center), project facility (parking, community room, generator), price (credit terms), brand and the goodwill of the project owner company, ... are important factors affecting the purchase of apartments in Hai Phong people. The survey results show that customers are intending and expecting to buy diverse apartments, ensuring comfort, standard and safety services.
- Hai Phong people are also interested in factors such as customer costs (price, credit, installment payments); quality of apartments (materials, kitchen, natural light, outside windows); water supply facilities (plumbing facilities, water quality and water pressure, drainage, internal architecture); environmental quality (traffic, noise, regional security); material facilities of the apartment building (parking lots, corridors, outside stairs, elevators, cargo warehouses).
- Experts' opinions, advertising and promotional activities also have an important influence on people's intention to buy apartments. In particular, the intention to buy an apartment is greatly influenced by the opinions of others through word of mouth information (introducing the positive points of the apartment from the people who bought, encouraged from friends and Relatives have bought the project apartments).
Research results show a close relationship between satisfaction, word of mouth information and loyalty
- People who intend to buy an apartment are most interested in the quality of service for people living in the apartment. Potential customers are interested in the components of service quality of apartment buildings. An important finding is that people who intend to buy an apartment always want to have an apartment in a diverse and synchronized apartment. They like the model of apartment buildings built with complete urban structure, including all services for residents such as offices, shopping centers, houses, schools, lakes. swimming, gym, bank, hospital, ... Apartment projects with swimming pools, gyms, shopping centers, ... in the same building are also products with technical stratification and full social infrastructure. If the apartment projects ensure high uniformity, they will surely attract large customers.
4. A number of housing development solutions to meet the needs of people in the average urban area in Vietnam
From the findings of factors affecting the intention to buy apartments, it is possible to propose some solutions to promote the trend of buying apartments in the medium urbanized cities such as Hai Phong. .
- First of all, the city needs to build a reasonable plan with a long-term vision of urbanization trends to reserve land for development of transport-connected apartments and with other technical infrastructure elements of the city. city. Residential areas should be reasonably distributed close to industrial zones and other industrial businesses. Because the location of apartment buildings is an important factor affecting people's choice of condominiums.
- Condominium projects should have reasonable planning to ensure uniformity in both technical and social infrastructures such as commercial centers, schools, hospitals, entertainment areas, sports and environs. School landscape with green trees, water surface. Newly developed cities like Hai Phong also have large areas that can actively be built into complete urban areas on all factors.
- High-rise apartment buildings should ensure the quality of construction and aesthetic facilities, with a reasonable design, water supply, drainage, parking, and support services. complete support. In particular, ensure the design of apartments to meet the new cultural living standards of young people working in the workplace, preferring to live with new cultural values.
- High-rise apartment building projects need a good management system, ensuring complete services for people living in the apartment building. In particular, it is necessary to ensure the security factor because those who intend to buy apartments always attach great importance to the level of security and existing schools in the area. If the existing real estate businesses ensure good and stable service quality for the population, the newly built apartments will be the most vivid evidence to convince those who want to buy houses will intend to buy. Condominium apartments.
- Because apartment price is still an important selection criteria for apartment buyers, especially for affordable customers and low-income workers. Therefore, businesses need to study market segments to develop quality apartments and prices suitable to the purchasing power of each customer group. Businesses also need to find ways to reduce the cost of apartment products.
- Condominium business enterprises also need to promote communication activities to convince customers, in which paying attention to word of mouth information from those who have been living in apartment buildings.
