Market choices driven by reference groups. An evolutionary approach

Abstract

The present paper tries to answer analytically how much the reference group influence can affect an actual market share of a particular brand or product. It is found that the increase of the size of a reference group and the probability of following the majority within the reference group may lead to the temporary modest prevalence of one brand. This result requires a relatively large size of a reference group and a high probability of following the majority within the reference group. If these conditions are not satisfied the effect on the market share is negligible.