Lots of factors should be considered - but normally most of the companies take the easy route and just buy QTP if they have enough budget.
Broadly, the following will give a direction :

Question 1. Who will use the tool ?

Scenario a. Tool is to be used by manual testers willing to learn automation to enhance their resume. In this case, no tool should be purchased at all. Just ask them to try their skill with some free tool. If they have enough IQ, they will manage just fine with the free tool. If they don't. no use wasting money over them.

Scenario b. Experienced automation experts are available. This is an unlikely event for a company that is in the process of deciding which tool to purchase. Still, if for some reason that happens, their opinion should be given utmost importance than LinkedIn forum feedback.

Scenario c. Developers will use to tool with test harness in dev environment for unit/integration test. xUnit/Selenium is good for that purpose. QTP/RFT/Silk is useless on this space. QTP recently managed to add xml/web service testing features but not really up to the mark yet.

Question 2. What kind of applications are to be automated.

Ideally this should be the first question to ask. But given the scarcity of truly good resource in test automation landscape, this takes the second position. If it is a modern web app, only Selenium will support latest browsers and features. Proprietary tools like QTP are not able to keep up on this space.

For Siebel/mainframe/SAP/PeopleSoft apps, QTP is a good option.

Bottom line is – resource availability is the critical factor. With good resource, any applicable tool will serve the purpose. Without it, any tool will become an excuse to avoid blames.
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