Abstract
The number of computers at home is continuously growing. To this end it is important to know more about the purchasing process. In this study we shall describe how some Finnish families purchased their home computer. We interviewed more than 90 families who had just purchased a home computer and also some non-computer families. Men and children seem to take the initiative in a family during the purchasing process. Especially when a family is purchasing their first home computer, they very often tum to their experienced friends for help. From this point of view home computers mostly differ from other durable goods in a family. Because of the possibility to use experience accumulated in the net of friends, the purchases of various families differ much less than we supposed before this study. The most important reason for purchasing a home computer was that adults would keep up with technical development. Generally families prepare more for the future than for this day by buying a home computer. When speaking about the directions of diffusion, the inputs that come from outside a family are most important. The outcome of the most recent interviews was that in future the Internet will get more tasks for home computers, but for the present we can find more potential expectations than applications in use.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35511-5_17
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© 2000 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
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Lahtinen, H. (2000). On Purchasing a Home Computer. In: Sloane, A., van Rijn, F. (eds) Home Informatics and Telematics. HOIT 2000. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 45. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35511-5_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35511-5_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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