Question

For the last few years, many property developers have been experiencing sluggish sales in the high end property market due to various factors. Use the Attitude-Toward-Object Model to suggest how a property developer can change consumers’ attitudes in favor of their products by:

(a) add an attribute that previously was ignored or an improvement or innovation; or removing a product feature

(b) change perceived importance of an attribute

(c) develop new products

(Note: to answer this question, students are expected to research the Malaysian property market. Use your creativity and research from other countries’ trends to suggest adding new attribute, change perceived importance of attribute and new product development.)

Answer 1

Attitude-toward-object Model is a model that is used to measure the "attitude" of the consumers behavior towards a certain product or service category or service brands. This has mainly three major factors that are predictive of attitudes :-

1. Salient Beliefs.
2. Strength of the belief
3. Evaluation of the attribute.

For any property deal, a customer would prefer to analyze the property of all the features and benefits, in the current and future context. the customer would ensure that the property is

• An approved master plan.
• Transportation master-plan.
• Government budget allocation approvals.
• The economic Drivers.
• Would be a Job Creating center

(A) ADDING AN ATTRIBUTE :- As discussed above, we need to highlight the best 2 or 3 benefits of the property along with the other benefits to the customer for him to get convinced. In Malaysia, there is a stagnation in the property business and also the number of ready-to-move unsold units have grown by over 40% over last year. So the feature that needs to be highlighted must be related to Future income / ROI ( resale or valuation of property), Residential / business HUB, Connectivity of the place, etc...

(B) Change in the perceived importance of an attribute : could be well managed by visit on the actual site of the project and secondly by the projection of the Future of the property. Fist, there is a need to identify which attribute of the customer is "high" on his priority list, Then we need to present to him the list of attributes that would most suit his perceptions.

(C) Develop new products : happens as there has been a change in the policies of the Malaysian government on infrastructural development projects (such as master plan of Kuala Lampur International Airport; Transit Oriented Development routes as Sungai Buloh-Serdang-Putrajaya MRT Line (SSP line); ). These are "properties for the future and can be developed as the " new Highlight of the property"