Cross-posted from Martin North’s DFA Blog:
Selecting a property to purchase requires a complex set of trade-off decisions. Beyond price and finance, through our household surveys, we have been examining more that fifty elements in this decision matrix, by segment. Today we discuss some of the elements, and how they differ across household groups using our master set of household segments. We devised a chart format which shows the relative importance different segments apply to a specific element.
We first look at crime statistics. We find that older Australians are much more aware of crime, and will factor this into their property selection. Exclusive households are also quite aware, whereas other segments are only likely to give this element a little consideration. (These are average scores, and in our data-sets we can drill into state and geographic areas, as well as looking at the score distributions, but that’s too detailed for this post.)
Turing to energy efficiency, we see that Suburban and Stable households have the greatest levels of awareness for energy efficiency factors, followed by Multicultural households, and Self-Funded Retirees. Exclusive households and Seniors score low on this dimension.
If we look at availability of fast internet, we see that this is an important consideration for both Young and Exclusive households. Suburban households see this as quite important, with Growing and Stable households, and older Australians following on. It is not very important to Disadvantaged or Battler households.
This begins to build up the matrix of decision drivers, which influences who buys what.
In the complex world of multidimensional decisions, humans are quite capable of weighing up many different factors at a subliminal level. Those wishing to influence specific households, and policy makers would do well to understand the divergent drivers in play. We find the science of this decision-making fascinating. Effective segmentation brings this to life.
