Conceptualizing Joint Decision-Making in Australian Higher Education

摘要

Joint decision-making has been an area of interest for a long time in the consumer research. Marketing professionals have always been interested in understanding how families are making choices and decisions collectively. The literature of household decision-making has focused on understanding how family members interact and influence each other when making decisions to purchase a product or a service (Koc, 2004). The goods or services where decisions are formed jointly within a family have a higher level of importance and have relatively higher perceived risk associated with the decision (Sheth, 1974). Consequently, there is a greater degree of involvement, information seeking, and negotiation during joint decision-making context in the families. Higher education is an example of a high-risk decision within the families where the parents and the young adults may be involved in the process and constantly interacting to influence their choice and preference in a joint setting. In studying joint decision-making, the decisions between the young adults and their parents will have a different preference structure for their individual consumption than the family collectively (Ott, 2012). The dyadic approach of decision-making within the family has been ignored by the marketing researchers. This research addresses three key aspects of the joint decision-making which necessitates the need for conducting the study. First, the need for understanding preference heterogeneity in individual versus joint deci sion-making. Second, how the preference structure varies during the interaction of the dyads. Third, the relative bargaining in the dyads during the decision-making process (Adhikari and Rao, 2013).