Preference of Relevant Others and Individual Choice Models

Despite a growing number of studies involving husband-wife decision making (Davis, 1970; Ferber, 1973; Ferber and Lee, 1974; Davis and Rigaux, 1974 and Munsinger, Weber and Hansen, 1974 to mention just a few), a recent review of the literature on decision making within the household (Davis, 1975) concludes that "the view of consumers as individual decision makers is still very much alive." This lopsided focus on the individual, which is clearly evident in most applied consumer research studies can be the result of a belief that the individual is the appropriate unit of analysis. This may be the case if one assumes that the individual makes his purchase and consumption decisions independent of the influence of others or alternatively that his decisions reflect his perceptions of the preference of others and their relative importance to his decision. This latter approach is implicit in most of the consumer behavior studies which tend to focus on the housewife as the representative "purchasing agent" of the household. Alternatively, one may recognize that the unit of analysis should be the household or any combination of members within it, but given the conceptual and methodological problems involved in moving from the individual to the multi-person unit of analysis (not to mention the extra costs involved in collecting such data), the researcher is willing to settle for the analysis of consumer behavior at the individual level. Since the purchase and consumption behavior of individuals is rarely done independently of the influence of others, it is desirable to change the unit of analysis in consumer research from the individual to the "buying center" (those members of the family and other individuals involved in the purchase decision).1 Having identified the members of the buying unit, ideally, one would like to examine the dynamics of the purchase and consumption decision processes among the relevant members of the buying center. Given, however, the complexity and cost of such an undertaking2, a somewhat less ambitious approach would be to examine explicitly the influence of relevant others on the purchase decision of a decision maker within the buying center. The importance of the influence of relevant others on an individual purchase behavior has long been recognized in the consumer behavior and marketing literature. Coulson (1966), for example, stated: "other members of the family exert considerable influence on the housewife in making brand decisions." Similarly, the organizational buying behavior literature has recognized the fact that most organizational purchase decisions are influenced by various members of the buying center-, and that purchasing agents attempt to take into consideration the preference of the other members of the buying center (Wind, 1967 and Webster and Wind, 1972). Examination of the influence of relevant others on a decision maker's buying decisions cannot explain the dynamics of the interaction among the members of the buying center, but if measured in a rigorous way may provide answers to questions such as: