Product with highest marketshare or most popular brandname usually not the best

Wanted to continue a discussion here on off topic about how so many of the products and companies that are leaders as far as marketshare are far from being the best...

It seems the more I learn about certain products the more I realize that the most heavily marketed and protected (huge heavy handed legal dept) products are almost never the best and most of the time not even close (though their marketing would lead you to believe the opposite).

Mag-Lite
Bose
Dell
Jose Quervo
Budweiser
Microsoft
Symantec
UPS

These are just a few I could think of off the top of my head that are majority leaders in their market share but are nowhere near the top as far as true quality. Maybe I am just getting a little wiser or as my wife would say, just getting a little picky!

Re: Product with highest marketshare usually not the best

How about Bang & Olufsen? From what I hear their products are good, but there are better for the kind of money you'd spend on them.

Re: Product with highest marketshare usually not the best

carrot said:

How about Bang & Olufsen? From what I hear their products are good, but there are better for the kind of money you'd spend on them.

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Certainly! Although they don't have a majority of marketshare in their product group, they do spend a large majority of their money on marketing not the quality of their products. This kind of leads into a very similar discussion about how popular name branded items are usually not the best either!

Re: Product with highest marketshare usually not the best

I couldn't put B&O into that catagory. Most of their stuff (dunno about the new products, and I'm not counting the video gear which was outsourced) sounds excellent and it's internally built very well out of quality parts. The problem is that it's also high-concept fashion design and a lot of their equipment isn't very practical to use outside the B&O family. If you want the same sound without the style you can pay 75% as much, if you want to pay the same amount, also without the style, you'll get about 125% better sound.To me they're an honest compay. They say "Buy our stuff because it sounds good and looks great."

Bose, on the other hand, says "Buy our stuff because it's the best that's ever been." When in reality it doesn't even sound that great. Bose is the Mag of audio equiment, except Mag at least has the advantage of offering a good value for the dollar.

You can add another company to that list: IBM/Lenovo. Thinkpads these days are just coasting on the rep built up in the past. Both the product and the support have gone downhill in a big way.

Re: Product with highest marketshare usually not the best

Designer clothes... almost all of them!

Bottled water.... flavored water... fitness water?!

Grey Goose Vodka (tastes pretty bad neat and costs a ton of money, see designer clothes)

Nike

Intel

Sony (some stuff is decent, some stuff is proprietary crap and most of it is overpriced)

Shimano (bike parts) Quality has dropped, proprietary components is their mantra and marketing is their muscle.

Trek They started with touring bikes, don't make one that is touring worthy anymore and flashiness is sacrificed over durability on their road bikes.

Hewlett Packard ink jet printers... useless warranty, poor customer service and declining quality.

Craftsmen tools Declining quality and power tools getting much worse

Re: Product with highest marketshare usually not the best

"The best" in some technical or quality sense is most always a niche part of a market and not the market share leader. The market leader is that for other reasons, e.g., Toyota is not a Lambourghini, but it is the best in a way which resonates with the biggest part of the market.

Well, I think the implication is that companies that are considered "premium" by people who haven't gotten past the marketing or word of mouth are often not up to snuff. Bose is the perfect example. Marketing has implied that Bose speakers are the best money can buy.

Doing a little research to get my new speakers--NHT Pro 00s, I got a little education on Bose and their slightly devious business approach. One reviewer talked about the extra thin fiberboard walls of the speakers and the unnaturally sharp treble to sound 'good' in a showroom.

I did the same thing with "gourmet" chocolate and learned that Godiva is far from what people in the know consider "high end." Any chocolate containing vegetable oil or artificial vanilla, vanillin (as Godiva, owned by Campbell's soup) does is not premium Surefire, it's mass market Mag lite.

Lightraven said:

I did the same thing with "gourmet" chocolate and learned that Godiva is far from what people in the know consider "high end." Any chocolate containing vegetable oil or artificial vanilla, vanillin (as Godiva, owned by Campbell's soup) does is not premium Surefire, it's mass market Mag lite.

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Either way, Godiva tastes good. But I like Teuscher better.

"Best" has different meanings, and is subjective. As a manufacturer, best may be measured in profit or market share. To a consumer, best is not necessarily the fastest car or the most distortion-free audio, but the combination of price, availability, function, reliability, etc.

I tend to trust the market to determine what is best. So from my perspective, Toyota is better than Maserati.

As for the heavy handed legal departments referenced above, I'm sure they seem heavy handed to those who are trying to steal the intellectual property of others. :nana:

yo

This is certainly no secret. Often the real bargains to be found are no-name brands selling for 1/3 the price. Some are better than name brands but some are also junk. You have to know what to look for. Some name brands are just high-priced junk as well. This is particularly true of clothing. I remember once going into a Century 21 just for kicks since they claimed to have such great bargains. Turns out what they sell is only a bargain if you're used to paying $300 for a shirt, and some of the supposedly $300 shirts going for $100 were paper thin and looked like they wouldn't last 3 washes. In general high-end/designer clothing is no way ever worth the cost. Of course, it pays to avoid $3 pants since those are likely garbage, but $10 on sale will usually buy you a decent pair of pants. No need to spend $100. Also, what's with the huge labels on designer clothing? If I'm going to advertise for someone I want to be paid, not vice versa, plus I was always taught that labels should be removed anyway before wearing clothes.

Cars are another great example of the market not selling what's really best for the consumer. All we have are high-maintenance gasoline powered vehicles, often larger than a person really needs, and with lots of unneeded luxuries as well. No EVs, no barebone cars for those on budgets, no one or two passenger vehicles for city use. There is a huge market for all those things, but fact is the vehicle manufacturers make more per car selling luxury SUVs so that's pretty much all they sell these days. And EVs will pretty much kill their spare parts business, and **** off the oil companies, so they're not made either.

Lightraven said:

Well, I think the implication is that companies that are considered "premium" by people who haven't gotten past the marketing or word of mouth are often not up to snuff. Bose is the perfect example. Marketing has implied that Bose speakers are the best money can buy.
...I did the same thing with "gourmet" chocolate and learned that Godiva is far from what people in the know consider "high end." Any chocolate containing vegetable oil or artificial vanilla, vanillin (as Godiva, owned by Campbell's soup) does is not premium Surefire, it's mass market Mag lite.

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Damn, see now I am going to have to do some chocolate research! I do really like Godivas dark chocolate. Ok, truth is I like most everyones dark chocolate!

I was going to list folks like Sony, HP and Intel but they also put out good products as well as the crappy ones. They do pawn off a lot of junk that sells well just because of the name.

I most certainly do not trust the market to decide what the best product is. The market can be bought and often is. The market has different values than someone who takes the time to research their purchases. One just hopes that the market isn't so bought that it can squeeze out the decent products. Generally there are enough of us that actually research something beyond the commercials on TV to keep the decent companies in business.

And in those cases these companies try to push them out of business with legal threats and other inexcusable garbage.

There is not a thing on your list that can't be completely done without, and in every single case done much better without I have very limited experience with Vodka anymore as I haven't drunk it much since college and so the taste of it reminds me of how sick it can make you in college :green: but the rest I agree with and already dont buy anymore.

Best does mean different things to different people.
sometimes I think answering what is best is a tough thing to answer.

Best sometimes has a diminishing return on investment. If you gain no move benefit from something more costly if it is indeed better. That is up to the need of the user and cannot be answered in a blanket way.

I do agree that best is rarely going to be found in the mid range of consumer goods but in the rare air above that if we are not talking best in an economic sence.

The best Car on earth if we can figure out what that is might not be as good as a typical Pickup Truck if thats what you need. Or that Porche might be useless to you compared to an Subaru Outback.

I used to work with a girl that said that anyone who had a minivan was stupid. I tried to tell her that they might be what is BEST for some people.

I tend to like what is best even if I cannot define what it is.

Oh,,,what was the question???

I think the product with the highest marketshare is probably never best.

Marketing may not be everything -- but it's pretty close to everything.

Marketing not only determines the most popular products, it often determines the very standard that will be used, often driving a whole class of superior products out of the marketplace. The higher quality BETA standard couldn't compete with the marketing job done by those pushing VHS, as an example.

Okay, in light of the latest IRC exploit, I have suddenly remembered another great example. MIRC. It's a chat client with many exploits, one of which is monitored by many popular routers with stateful packet inspection/filtering and causes an instant disconnect. Which means, it affects all users of said router, not just MIRC users...

Kind of like First Alert/BRK... They have good quality smoke detectors but Firex models are faster-responding, and installed quite often by contractors.
Of course Firexs are not without their flaws, mainly the piezo disc is only held onto its contacts by the pressure exerted by the cover. If the alarm is bumped or dropped, the disc will slide off of it's "sweet spot", and it will make a weird screeching noise when you test it. You have to use a small screwdriver to slide the plate back to its "sweet spot".

GEE, the obvious one I don't see, but it was and remains the greatest.

VHS vs. Betamax.

Betamax was superior in every way except one, VHS won the war.

Bill

Do you think the the ipod can fall into this catagory? It is probably the most popular mp3 player, but does it live up to its name? I've heard both sides.

One point. I don't agree that Mag has the largerst market share in all flashlight markets. Mag has almost no showing in the shooting sports area, Tactical area...such as SWAT teams, and military special forces. And no showing in the weapon mounted light area. Also, from what I see they are in decline with police forces. Now maybe that does not seem to be a large part of the market, but I think it is getting larger all the time. Around here, if you go to a large gun store that supplies police and civilian...you can hardly find Mag. Look in national shooting magazines and you will not even see a Mag. In the shooting sports area I have seen a decline with Mag. Even the NRA store only has small Xenon type lights they sell. Anyway, I admit I don't know how much of this is compared to the normal Wal-Mart home buyer market. Just saying IMHO they do not have a lock on all of the markets.

iPod is good, but over priced. Its an example of high end marketing, but their product isn't that crappy either. Anyways, they've pretty much set industry standard on mp3 player pricing, ya can't find any 30 GB mp3's much cheaper than what Apple is selling them at. Unless you want to build one. The iPod lives up to its name, but not what the "fanboiz" of the iPod hype it up to be. Nor does it suck as bad as the detractors say. Its pretty much an average 30 gig/60 gig mp3 player on the market.

Dell is CRAP, but they fill a role that people need, cheap computers. Probably all of us here can build a computer on our own, but if you want a CHEAP computer, you go to Dell. Cheap laptop with decent specs? Dell. Quality aint that great, but hey, its something. Find me a cheaper computer with the same specs Dell has. It'll be quite difficult for some products (especially laptops).

Most mass production goods are marketed. but even though the Maglite is marketed well, it fills a niche that little to no one can beat. Cheap, durable, relatively decent quality flaslight. Its not like people are WILLING to hand over bundles and bundles of money like we do for flashlights (I'm getting some crazy looks over at my college for buy my Arc AAA...).

"Best" is completely relative in this case. What are we specifically looking for? Bang for the buck? Quality? Other than the VHS vs Betamax thing (and potentially the blu-ray vs hd-dvd soon), which aren't necessarily mass produced products from specific companies (more like patent war that was determined by a single mistake/decision), popular "brand names" must have filled a niche sometime in history. It might be mostly hype now, but I assure you that if its solely hype, its marketshare is dropping.

The iPod stays on top becuase of its innovation. Budwiser's marketshare has been eaten up by forgot who (I'm not of age, but its Bud's main rival). Bose... well known name, but I doubt that are that dominant in the audio industry (hardon kardon, seinheiser, and a few others are well known audio specialists). Well known companies must have done SOMETHING to make them well known. Even Microsoft was a new "idea" a long time ago, they've just managed to keep their head start. Personally I feel that the companies that are well known, probably did something right, at some time. Marketing doesn't determine whether a product succeeds or fails but rather boosts it artificially for a while. If the "spike" in market share isn't sustained... *shrug* probably not a good product eh?