What influence the buyers’ decision-making process? : a study on the Swedish tenant-owned apartment market

Sammanfattning: This thesis is concerned with the decision-making process on the tenant-owned apartment marked in Sweden. It is argued that decision-making on the market is complex and the consumer protection is in need to be strengthened. The main issues on the market is argued to be the information asymmetry and agency problems. These phenomena influence the bounded rationality in the decision-making process. The purpose is to gain an understanding of the information asymmetry and agency problems on the tenant-owned apartment market in order to explain how it influence the decision-making process. The empirical context where this research is performed is the tenant-owned apartment market in Sweden. More specifically, the relationship between buyers and brokers are examined. The descriptive and exploratory purpose of this mixed methods research calls for abductive reasoning. The choice of performing this research through mixed methods lead to the application of triangulation which influenced the choice of data collection techniques, namely interviews and a questionnaire. The broker perspective was examined with four interviews of real-estate brokers from the Kristianstad area. The perspective of the buyers was examined through three interviews with buyers from the Kristianstad area. Additionally, the questionnaire gathered the opinions from 83 respondents. If buyers desire to make decisions that is made under as little bounded rationality as possibly, efforts needs to be made regarding the procedures on the market. Bounded rationality occurs when buyers perceive limitations during the examination of properties which influence the decision-making process. Lastly, this field of research was previously rather uncovered. However, this thesis contributes with an understanding of various aspects that influence the decision-making process in the field of the tenant-owned apartment market. We believe that a further understanding of the tenant-owned apartment market would facilitate attempts to strengthen the consumer protection.