This is purely my thoughts based on a lifetimes (bad) experience with people in general. xD

Humans are technically pack animals, we're social therefore we do (in one form or another) require the presence of other humans. As a result, you end up with situations where people don't want to be 'different' from the rest of the group. This can be as simple as everyone within the group adressing each other in a paticular accent, to being so dependant on one dominant person in said group that you're shunned if you go above their desicion.

There have been studies done on this effect before, such as getting the group to walk in a circle and run out the fire escape when someone blows a whistle. One person in the group was 'seeded' to run out the wrong way, to see how the pack mentality would react, in that case about 60% of the group followed that person, whilst the others were probably unaware of the guys movement until they'd actually got to the fire escape.

I suppose a real case I could use is the building here of a 'youth entertainment centre'. It was hotly requested and all that, so it was opened and after about a month or so people realised no-one was actually using the facility. The groups were about 50 feet up the road waiting for the 'squaddies' to finish in the pubs. Turns out they didn't know why they didn't want to go there, they just didn't.
Its possible that in this case one person made the desicion not to go, whilst everyone else didn't want to look silly and went with said person. After a while this becomes ingrained as 'natural behaviour' as to what is 'cool' or whatever else.

It's also what I've had a lot of trouble with recently with trying to gain interest in Airsoft here. I've done the newspaper story, the TV story and all that, but it would seem that someone doesn't like the fact they aren't real guns, something along the lines of "if I can't kill anyone with it, then whats the point?". This deters people from having anything to do with it as its seen as being 'uncool' or 'wierd' by this one person, who persuades (or forces, you decide) others to think the same, so the pack is taught to be repulsive of this new idea. Unfortunately for me it prevents me from making a real business case of it as there's barely 3 people I know who are interested, 2 of them aren't even in the falklands anymore. xD

So, how to get around this? Then again, can you get around it?
what are your experiences with this sort of behaviour? (I.e, planned a meeting somewhere, a dinner/party/whatever and had absolutely no-one turn up because they heard so-and-so wasn't going).