Incorporating User Perceptions and Product Attributes in Software Product Design and Evaluation

In order to better explain and predict consumers’ preferential choices of software products, we propose an integrated reconceptualization of IT that incorporates the tool, proxy and ensemble views of IT. We also develop a choice-based conjoint model to incorporate the product attributes, external control factors, user perceptions, and contextual factors to estimate users’ software preferences. The influences of product attributes on users’ perceptions of product characteristics are also examined. With a choice-based conjoint study, and the collection of additional data on users’ perceived product characteristics, we demonstrate that the proposed model can better explain and predict users’ software choices than the model with product attributes or with user perceptions exclusively, in terms of the in-sample fit and the holdout prediction hit rate at the individual-level and the aggregate-level. This study contributes to the literature by providing a better understanding of how various IT components jointly determine consumers’ software selection decisions.