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Many purchase decisions involve groups of individuals. In marketing literature, a majority of the studies related to group decisions place greater emphasis on predicting the outcome of the decision than the process. In this dissertation, I contend that understanding the process by which a purchase decision is reached is important because it may influence the joint choice and the satisfaction of a group member with the decision. I study two key elements of the decision making process namely, revision and concession. Consistent with previous research, I propose that a member's preferences are unlikely to be stationary during the group decision-making process. Additionally, a member may make a concession to accommodate the preferences of the other member(s). These two elements are not mutually exclusive and members may revise and/or make concessions when reaching a joint decision. I argue that it is important to distinguish between revision and concession because each may have a different impact on a member's satisfaction with the joint decision. I propose that the degree of revision and concession made by a member is related to several member and decision related factors. The change in preference of a member is expected to affect the joint purchase decision by reducing the degree of disagreement between the members. It is proposed that a member's satisfaction with the joint decision made is positively related to her degree of revision and negatively related to her own concession. A field study funded by a packaged goods company was designed and implemented to provide a rigorous test of the proposed hypotheses. There is compelling evidence for the negative impact of concession on satisfaction. There is also partial support for the positive impact of revision on satisfaction. Additionally, satisfaction is influenced by an interaction effect between a member's own concession and the concession made by the other member. An important implication of the proposed model is that the process by which a purchase decision is reached (via revision or concession) has a distinct impact on the satisfaction of the group member with the joint decision. / Ph. D.

Consider the following scenario: A mother chooses to marry off her 10 year-old daughter, not because she doesn’t know the harmful effects of child marriage, nor because she thinks that it is good that her daughter marries when she is 10 years old. Rather, she is unable to feed her daughter and realizes that her daughter’s survival depends upon her marrying a financially stable man. This is an apparent example of what human development practitioners and political philosophers call an adaptive preference (AP): a preference, formed under oppressive circumstances, that seems to perpetuate the agent’s own oppression. Prevailing opinion is that forced tradeoffs—especially following Serene Khader’s taxonomy—, like the case presented above, are a type of AP: one in which a person makes a decision because of a limited option set. In this paper I argue that no paradigm cases of forced tradeoffs should not be classified as APs. Instead, I offer a revised definition of adaptive preferences where I argue that adaptive preferences are psychological traits that cause the agent with adaptive preferences to make irrational or uninformed decisions that perpetuate their own oppression. I defend this new definition by exploring the implications of changing the definition. In particular, forced tradeoffs involve different kinds of interventions from other kinds of adaptive preferences and including forced tradeoffs risks committing testimonial injustice against those who have limited option sets. / Master of Arts

Debate over land development continues to be an issue of dissension between developers and designer. Of particular contention is the issue of neighborhood design. A sector of the design profession has developed a paradigm primarily based on neighborhood design/development of the early twentieth century. This paradigm is known as New Urbanism. While some feel strongly that New Urbanism is the answer to questions related to neighborhood design, others feel that Conventional Suburban Development is what people want. This study aims to determine what the consumer wants in suburban neighborhood design through the means of survey research. The survey employed was based on a previous study conducted by the Conservation Fund in conjunction with Robert Charles Lesser Company (RCLCO) of the Atlanta housing market. The survey asks respondents to choose between attributes associated with New Urban design and those associated with Conventional Suburban Development. This study is focused on the Borough and Township of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Neighborhoods from the Borough and Township were surveyed. The Borough neighborhood is a proxy for a New Urban neighborhood. The Township neighborhoods are Conventional Suburban Neighborhoods. The results between the two groups of respondents are compared to give further insight to consumers' preferences. Results indicate that residents of neighborhoods with New Urban attributes prefer this neighborhood style to Conventional Suburban Development. Residents of Conventional Suburban Neighborhoods are divided on their preference for neighborhood design. The findings show that approximately 25% of the Doylestown housing market desires something other than the predominant Conventional Suburban Development style. / Master of Landscape Architecture

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