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Related to my thoughts on Private Equity buying out local businesses, particularly those with lengthy presence in a community.
On the one hand you could chalk this up to just inevitable outcome of Capitalism where all goodwill, consumer surplus, and 'brand loyalty' is converted into shareholder value whenever possible.
I think its not inevitable, but just as in nature, any excess calories will invite predators, scavengers, or parasites to 'restore equilibrium.' "Oh boy, people will pay a bit of premium on this particular brand to gain status/ensure functionality/avoid copycats. Let's see how much money we can pump them for before they balk."
I kind of disagree that "the entire concept of 'brand' has been eroding."
Its starting to appear like the brand is now the only factor that matters, when the individual consumer is not independently able to judge the quality of their products.
One of the more stark examples is the apparent preference for the iPhone over any competitor, even though the average smartphones are almost identical in capabilities these days. The higher end Samsungs are usually better than the iPhone in terms of cutting-edge tech. But Apple has a TON of lock-in and goodwill purchased during Steve Jobs' tenure, and current execs seem competent at maintaining that edge. (Yes, I know Apple software itself has some real advantages over Android).
It feels like MBA-types are very keen about recognizing a brand-name that has a positive reputation (even or perhaps ESPECIALLY if the brand is all they have, they don't own any manufacturing capacity), and then 'rug-pulling' the fans/aficianados who 'bought in' while it was on the rise to squeeze a burst of cash from them even while removing those factors/features they most loved about the product itself.
This is perhaps most annoying to me because I think 'brand loyalty' is mostly a good thing insofar as there's an 'implicit' contract that the company will keep its products of generally the same sort of quality and, one hopes, pricing as they've been, absent some external forces acting upon them and the customers are able to buy said products without having to do extra research to know what they're getting. And usually don't have to worry about the customer service because the company knows repeat business will come so keeping satisfaction high is prioritized.
When the company changes ownership and management, they usually go right about breaking that implicit contract (ADMITTED that there is no legally enforceable cause of action here!) but are happy to coast off customers' belief that little has changed, and certainly won't ever explain that they're cutting corners to save costs.
I will believe this is about defense against taxation and antitrust judgments, and not capitalistic hypercompetition, until someone gives me sufficient evidence my priors are mistaken.
Elaborate?
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Fender is notorious for this. They tend to reshuffle their product lines every year, and this inevitably results in a product line disappearing, only for a new product line with a nearly identical name appearing one quality tier down. It's reached the point where people are starting to catch on, because a lot of buyers on the used market are demanding a manufacturing date now.
One pet peeve I have, which is bad enough that if it occurs, I will usually write off a particular brand, is making small updates to a given product line, maybe not even enough to render them 'incompatible,' but now its got a different product ID, slightly different parts here and there, and shows up as a different item on Amazon, whilst filling the exact same product/price niche.
Even worse when it means that you either don't sell parts for the old model or, fairly often, the old parts are now prohibitively expensive so repair becomes less appealing than replace.
These days you can almost always get around that fact by going and buying a cloned part made in china, but I dislike that since now you're REALLY eating some risk on quality control.
Look, I want you to be trying to innovate and improve the product, and sometimes I buy a replacement and think "why yes, this is a meaningful improvement over the previous version." I just want a certain amount of transparency when that's been done. Software generally does this the right way with versioning.
i just UTTERLY DESPISE when a company intentionally adds to my 'mental overhead' in hopes of confusing me into making a purchase I might not make if given consideration. You're making me think harder about the value I'm getting in hopes that I will not want to bother with the effort and will coast on autopilot.
Meanwhile, a big reason I'm loyal to your product AT ALL is because I'm able to buy it on autopilot and generally won't regret the decision later. I guard my mental energy for important decisions, don't have me waste it on figuring out if your company's headphones are still up to snuff!
"Hey we changed the design of our packaging for [reasons], don't bother reading the size/weight to see if we reduced the amount you're getting." Then you see they've shaved a couple ounces of product out and you have to do the mental math to see how the price per ounce or what-have you compares to other options... again.
AI actually makes it WAY EASIER to spot and avoid this practice. Literally just ask it to figure out how the product has changed from generation to generation, compare prices over time and between brands, and if needed see if the brand has changed ownership anytime recently.
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