Vol :37 Issue No.1 2012 - Open House International

Table 2. Correspondence between satisfaction level and renovation done
mean satisfaction level was low at 2.2 with a vast
majority (86.5%) of the owners indicating dissatisfaction
(rating 1 or 2) as against only 8.1% indicating
high satisfaction (rating 4 or 5). The results were
very similar for Kuala Trengganu where the mean
satisfaction level was at 2.1 with 93.5% of owners
rating dissatisfied, but were markedly different for
Shah Alam and Kota Kemuning where only 38.3%
and 30.2% rated dissatisfied respectively with the
corresponding mean scores of 3.06 and 3.32.
Thus there is reason to believe that the eastern can
be distinguished from the western region on the
basis of the satisfaction levels of house buyers.
It would be reasonable to surmise that owners
would react rather predictively according to their
satisfaction or lack of it and that the nature of their
reaction would influence their decisions or actions
in terms of renovation initiatives. If this presumption
is correct, the inclination to renovate is expected to
be greater among the dissatisfied owners than the
satisfied owners; as a corollary, more of dissatisfied
owners and less of satisfied owners would engage
in makeover initiative. However, when the data was
subjected to Chi-square significance test (as illustrated
in Table 2), no evidence is found of such
association at α = 0.05 level of significance. This
implies lack of association between owners’ satisfaction
level and their makeover initiative. In fact,
the samples in combination produced a test value
just outside the significance level (at α = 0.055)
with the individual data for Shah Alam, Kemuning
and Kuala Trengganu producing values even further
outside . These results are interesting for their
lack of intuitive appeal. Only Kota Bharu showed a
semblance of the expected behaviour where the
existence of an association between satisfaction
level and the makeover initiative was indicated.
Next the data on dissatisfied owners was
examined for possible link between owners’ dissatisfaction
and reaction to the dissatisfaction in terms
of makeover initiatives. As expected, the link was
very strong for all the four locations with dissatisfied
owners either already having had alteration jobs
done or had committed to one for the near future;
none indicated that they would not do anything
about it. In Kota Bharu, all but one dissatisfied owners
performed makeover exercises at some point
after acquiring their properties; even the single
exception indicated an intention to perform the
same in the near future. For Kuala Trengganu, the
proportion of dissatisfied owners who had renovated
was 93.1% while the remaining 6.9% would follow
soon. In Shah Alam, the corresponding proportion
was 88.9% with the remaining 11.1% indicating
their plan to renovate immediately.
Kemuning had the lowest percentage of its dissatisfied
owners performing renovation. Even so, the
percentage was high at 84.6% with the remaining
15.4% all indicating their intention to renovate in
the near future.
However, when responses from the satisfied
owners (scores of 4 or 5) were analysed, the findings
became of interest because of some unexpected
results they produced. In particular, they showed
that makeover activities were high even among this
group and almost matched those of the dissatisfied
owners. Taking all the samples together, the proportion
of satisfied owners who engaged in
makeover was 74.0% while the results for the individual
locations were 100% for Kuala Trengganu,
81% for Shah Alam and 70.8% for Kemuning.
Only Kota Bharu was an exception with a much
lower renovation rate of 33.3%, which relates
closely to what is expected. It ought to be noted
though that the sample sizes for Kuala Trengganu
and Kota Bharu are probably too small for conclusiveness
(see Table 3). Nonetheless, together with
the findings of insignificance earlier, these results
make evident the fact that satisfaction level may not
be the only factor in owners’ decision to renovate.
In a way, these results also accounted for why lack
of association was found earlier between satisfac-
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open house international Vol.37 No.1, March 2012 Examining The Potential For Mass Customisation... Md. Nasir Daud, Hasniyati Hamzah and Yasmin Mohd Adnan