Agreement and disagreement in family vacation decision-making

Abstract

In the last 20 years changes have taken place which have altered the decision-making process in families-family democracy is clearly in the ascendant. The family has evolved into what business research calls a decision-making unit. This general trend probably also has consequences for holiday decisions. The focus of this research is on (dis)agreement within couples concerning 15 vacation sub-decisions. In this Dutch longitudinal study, data were collected for couples over a period of nearly a year. Our main conclusion is that holiday choice has evolved over the last 30 years into being very much a joint decision, in which family members discuss, seek information for the discussion and use influencing strategies. The dominant disagreement-resolution strategy is the golden mean strategy. This is a strategy of give-and-take-and-reach-a-compromise. Compared with other choices, the holiday choice is also more of a joint affair. Finally, intrafamily (dis)agreement has consequences for satisfaction with the choice process, the amount of discussion and information searching. Implications of the increased family democracy for marketing and advertising are described. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.