Comparing personal and organisational preferences in the acquisition of information technologies: case of personal computing

Effective decision-making is essential not only for business but also for personal life. Using appropriate decision tools is the key factor of making a successful decision. Technologies are changing very fast in today' consumer electronics industry. It is extremely complicated for the buyers to differentiate one product from the other. This paper utilises a decision model, which integrated hierarchical decision-making and utility theories to identify the preferences of IT professionals for computing attributes. The paper then compares the results with those of prior research, which explored student users. The results indicate that the preferences do not change from one group to another. This suggests that the IT organisations may have aligned personal and organisational goals well.