yeah, but none of that conflicts with my 'sales subtracts value' theory, it just explains that people working at large corporations are more concerned with what decision looks right than what decision is right.

That aside, I've seen the same thing happen at small companies that just had a lot of money. In one example, the guy making the decision was as technical as I am, and owned a good chunk of the company. I wanted a cheaper homegrown solution. "Dude, that's your Porsche" I said.

I can understand why he went for the expensive solution instead (I was pretty young at the time, and prone to rash decisions and mistakes, and so was the rest of the technical team. The expensive product was expensive, but it worked.) Still, I felt he went with the vendor who looked good over the vendor that actually came out ahead in all our tests (and was cheaper, too... partially because they didn't take us out to lunch at fancy restaurants.)