In general, consumer psychology is the study of how people relate to the products and services that they purchase or use. Consumer psychologists study virtually all psychological and behavioral responses that can occur within the context of a person's role as a consumer. The consumer behavior is an important factor to indicate the decision making process in buying a house. Moreover, the buying behavior is influenced by both internal and external factors. The internal factors comprised of motivation, perception, consumer resources, knowledge, attitudes, personality, values and lifestyle. Cultural background, social class, personal influence, reference group and situation also influence the decision-process behavior. Reference group could be assembled into three components that is family, friends and colleagues.
Motivation
Motivation is a need becomes a motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of intensity. A motive is a need that is sufficiently pressing to drive the person to act. The level of motivation also affects the buying behavior of customers. Every person has different needs such as physiological needs, biological needs, social needs etc. The nature of the needs is that, some of them are most pressing while others are least pressing.
Therefore a need becomes a motive when it is more pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction. Generally, the incentives that drive a person’s motivation to purchase a house are very subjective and individual. For example, people might purchase a house for their family, investment purposes and other significant reasons for purchasing.
Perception
Choosing a right house to purchase usually is the major concern of the buyers. Selecting, organizing and interpreting information in a way to produce a meaningful experience of the world is called perception. There are three different perceptual processes which are selective attention, selective