Wow!! You speak for an entire continent! In all of history, that's really never happened before.
This is a good time to segue into something about brand awareness and promoting cutting edge products.
In the mid 1980s the Herman Miller company release the Aeron chair on the market. It was the very first office chair that supported the user with a mesh material instead of foam and fabric.
Herman Miller spent a lot of money promoting this new paradigm and that promotion money was built into the cost of the product.
Apple too has built a lot of money into marketing their new products for the same reasons. People need to be "sold" on the idea they need to buy a product that they have never purchased before. It's the cost of owning the market leader's products.
Once any company shows any success at capturing the public's attention, there is always a lot of "me too" companies that will try to crowd into that niche will minimum marketing and singing the song, "Me too but for less."
Eventually a product needs no marketing. People accept that the product does a useful function. In 1950 a toaster needed to be marketed and sold for a lot more then they do today, and you don't see them advertised any longer either.
Now you can pay $399 for a genuine, but stripped down, Aeron chair, or $39.90 for a knock-off at Office Depot. You can do much the same with quality watches, hand bags, or running shoes.
When any company markets quality products and focuses on the upper margins of what that product can be sold for, they are making a conscious decision to not get down into the muck with the bottom-feeders.
There will always be bottom-feeders in any product niche. That's a given. Because I sell high value products, (not Herman Miller) I always know I will lose a certain segment of the market to people that see my products as "overpriced."
