Consumer Behavior and Choice of Housing in Kenya: A Case of Selected Residential Rental Estates in Nairobi City County
Keywords:
Consumer decisions, information search, information evaluation, choice of housing, rental housing.Abstract
Consumer decisions are those decisions consumers make in the market place transactions and activities. This may vary depending on their level of buying decision behavior as well as level of product involvement. Hand in hand is consumer behavior which is identified with a consumer during the consideration, purchase and usage of a product. Available and affordable housing for every Kenyan across all age and income groups is one of the aspects of development in reference to the Kenya Vision 2030. However with the recent trend of continuous rural to urban migration/ urbanization, housing needs still remain a thorning issue more so in urban and town areas as portrayed by population census reports 1989. 1999, 2009. Rental consumers in urban/town areas of Kenya, particularly middle to low income earners vary in their choice of formal housing depending on consumer behavior set of factors such as consumer tastes, preference, search activities and evaluation of product information on housing decisions. This therefore formed the basis of the study of relationship between consumer behavior and choice of housing in Kenya. As insight from this study would enable developers in the housing market particularly the government and marketers incorporate consumer trends as they seek provision of decent housing to its population. The study used descriptive research design and targeted middle to lower income rental consumers in Nairobi North, Nairobi East and West lands as population under study. The study used partly stratified random sampling and partly purposive sampling technique in choosing respondents for primary data collection. The findings were then analyzed by the use of Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) software to obtain the descriptive and inferential statistics.
From the findings, the study established that consumer tastes and preferences strongly influenced choice of rental housing, whereas search activities and evaluation of product information were weak influencers of choice of rental housing. The findings were presented by tables.
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