Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Intelligent Realty

There once was a television program that featured a real estate agent showing a house to people on hidden camera. The act was to demonstrate how best to prepare one's own house for sale, but something else was demonstrated at the same time. Something which those of you studying Marketing or Behavioral Economics may want to heed.

There were two types of people who inspected the house for sale.

People who focused upon and liked or disliked the following:
1. The size and shape of the rooms.
2. The decorating, furniture, paint color, carpeting or wallpaper.

The characteristic of things that cannot be changed, and the characteristics of things that can or will easily be changed.

When people were complaining about the decor, the agent continued to show the house.

Since the decor can easily be changed, either the potential buyer is trying to hint to the agent that they already decided against the house, or the potential buyer doesn't know themselves that they already decided against the house.

Or the potential buyer is merely stalking into the lives of seller just to play the role of interloper, and is wasting the agent's time

I can't believe the potential buyer sincerely expects the decor to remain the same after the seller has moved out, or worse, they believe that the decor cannot be changed.

People who focus on room size and utilities, and ignore the decor are clearly still optimistic and especially realistic about the property.

This appeared to demonstrate that people have a variable perception or belief about how much they themselves can change their own environment, or how much control they believe they have in their day to day lives.

Using this tiny example, can you measure how much you believe you control your environment? What other examples are there?

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