People buy for their reasons

I was recently talking to the IT Director of a large organisation I happen to know and we got chatting about what he looks for from vendors, etc.

I asked him if he had ever purchased technology that was more expensive and performed less well than its competition. I wasn't too shocked when he confirmed that he had, but I was taken aback when he explained why....

Heis company was wall-to-wall technology from vendor A (a very large well know fortune 100 tech company) and the logical, economic, technical, political best decision would have been to buy a new platform from vendor A but he didn't. Instead he purchased from vendor B (a very large well know fortune 100 rival tech company). Vendor B's solution was also more expensive than vendor A's.

His reason......he wanted to be able to put on his CV that he had implemented a solution from vendor B.

It really is true, people buy for their reasons and price is rarely a key factor.