Sociocognitive Analysis of Group Decision Making among Consumers

Abstract

A sociocognitive perspective is developed to further the understanding of the relation between cognitive and social processes. The approach combines social network analysis with a cognitive network perspective to enable the researcher to study how social structure influences cognitive structure and how shared cognitive structure influences choice. This perspective is applied to how a group (with several subgroups) makes a consumer decision with consequences for the entire group. The results show that social structure influences cognitive structure, that shared knowledge is related to choice, and that the sociocognitive perspective provides new insights to prior literature on group decision making and the relation between group membership and brand choice.