Page 10 - Surveyor 52.2 WEB

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The Malaysian Surveyor
offered by the top five property
developers in Malaysia.
The main contribution of this
paper is in providing a systematic
categorisation of lifestyle housing
based on the advertised features.
Structurally, this paper discusses
the literature review, the research
methodology, results and
discussions and finally concluding
with developers’ lifestyle ideas.
1.1 A primer on
lifestyle housing
Maslow’s theory known as the
Hierarchy of Human Needs
discussed in his book A theory of
human motivation has become the
main reference in studies showing
the link between human motivation
and housing behaviour. One such
usage of the theory is establishing
the link between housing preference
and housing satisfaction.
According to this theory, humans
are motivated to gratify five related
basic needs; in ascending order,
physiology, safety, love, esteem, and
self-actualisation. The hierarchical
order is important, with a lower need
monopolizing one’s thoughts and
actions and must be satisfied before
the self could turn to the next higher et al. (2001), lifestyle is influenced
need.
Furthermore, the gratified need
would no longer serve as a
motivator. Fundamentally, this theory
can explain why people’s housing
preferences improve alongside
their socio-economic status. For
instance, a house used to be a mere
shelter, which is the lowest of the
hierarchical level.
However, with time there occur
improvements in education,
economy, social status and family.
The gratified physiological need
would now be replaced with the need
for safety. In housing, housing safety
10
Age Social Class
Type
Size Education
Stage in Life Cycle Income
Occupation
LIFESTYLE
Figure 1: Influences on lifestyle
could be achieved legally (tenure
security) or physically (gated and
guarded communities). The pattern
would be repeated once a need is
fulfilled.
The above explains the demand
side of lifestyle housing that in
turn has to be sufficiently studied
and generalised by developers –
producers of the final product – into
typologies that specific consumer
segments would identify with. In
marketing, lifestyle research has
long been developed to address the
deficiency of traditional psychology/
demographics or “psychographics”
research in examining consumer
behaviours and preferences
(Beamish et al., 2001; Vynke, 2002).
Introduced by Lazer (1963), the
concept of lifestyle is a composite
of motivations, needs, and wants of
individuals. According to Beamish
by a number of lifestyle factors that
may be grouped under household
type, social class and housing
values (see Figure 1). In the interest
of economics and efficiency,
developers must identify, generalise
and categorise the requirements of
each lifestyle housing typologies.
It is developers’ interpretation
and mediation of house buyers’
preferences, in other words
developers’ lifestyle ideas, that really upgrade to the previous traditional
Housing Values
Economy
Family
Personal
Social
frame and construct the final lifestyle
product (Kriese & Scholz, 2012).
1.2 The evolution of
housing typologies in
Malaysia
The innovation of housing typologies
in Malaysia is not a recent event, but
rather something that has occurred
over the years. For the purpose of
this paper, the timeline commenced
from the country’s independence to
reflect the beginning of the modern
Malaysia.
1957-1980 (Post-independence–
early industrialisation): From
vernacular housing to housing
estates
Housing typologies in Malaysia have
evolved to reflect the shift from the
agriculture-based economy of the
1950s to the 1980s manufacturing-
based economy. The functions of
housing can be seen to change
alongside the various dominant
typologies, as shown in Figure 1.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the main
typology was the basic shelter-based
traditional vernacular Malay houses
that can be found in both rural and
urban settings. In the 1970s, the
ubiquitous terraced house in planned
housing estates was seen as an