Group Decision Making Based on Constructing a Short List.

This article considers several aspects of a multi-person household making an important consumer decision, e.g. buying a new flat. In such situations, normally several members of the household have input in the decision making process. Also, when there are a large number of offers, search can be facilitated via the use of the Internet. Basic information about offers, e.g. price, location, number of rooms and size, can be found on the Internet at very little cost. However, in order to make a final decision, members of the household should physically view a number of offers. The costs involved at this stage of the search process are much higher. In such scenarios, search based on the short list heuristic are efficient. Search via the Internet is used to find a relatively small number of promising offers from a large number of propositions. These promising offers are then more closely inspected, before a final decision is made. Results from simulations indicate that group decision procedures based on each decision maker ranking offers and the short list heuristic can be highly effective and robust.