MODELING INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCE EVOLUTION AND CHOICE IN A DYNAMIC GROUP SETTING

Organizational buying and strategic marketing decisions often emerge f rom a messy process of belief accommodation and compromise. In a longi tudinal field study, the authors investigate how the beliefs and prefe rences of individual actors in a collective decision developed and cha nged. This provides a rare opportunity to relate beliefs and social in fluence to articulated preferences, as well as to evaluate the basic a ssumptions that underlie persuasive arguments theory, a prominent theo ry of group polarization. Econometric models are employed to test prop osed relationships between group processes and outcomes. A model incor porating both cognitive and social process variables accurately predic ts 95% of the actors' top choices. The authors provide new insights fo r understanding the dynamics underlying group polarization and explori ng group processes in marketing.