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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Consistent quality is the entire point of brands. Find a soap you like and you can mindlessly get the same thing for the next 20+ years. Which also generally means you can pick a random brand and not end up with junk as long as trust the supply chain.

The issue is when you want something different than the millions of other people out there. Sure, things change and the quality may slip, but there is only so much time in the world is comparison shopping really worth it to you?

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A lot of brands also try to push cheapo goods under their good brand, usually by adding some stupid suffix like "express" to the brand name, which you don't realize until after you've bought the item.

Electronics especially is very difficult. Take Samsung for example, any phone that is not the latest S-model is really disappointing. Less educated consumers just know that "samsung phones are good", when most reviews only refer to S10. Likewise I can't mindlessly go into a store an buy a Sony TV even if my last Sony TV was good, i need to do the online research to figure out that the last 2 characters in the model-nr indicates if this is the premium version or not. Things change so quickly also that the brand that had the lead one year ago is no longer having the best options.

Unfortunately private equity funds buy out companies with a good brand reputation, do "quality fade" on the produce, and milk the company's reputation until it is in tatters, then get a tax deduction for the inevitable bankruptcy.

That's kind of the point, though. Supply chains are becoming more transparent and accessible to the end customer, so in 2020, you have a much better chance of going "directly to the source" than you did 20 years ago.

So the FOMO is paying a brand markup for consistent quality you could get for less.

Then you have "established" brands that are just trying to maximize profit. And "new" brands that are just AliExpress resellers. So trust that even a Brand™ experience will be a good one is waning.

In other words, the premise that you're paying for time savings is less assured, and the information to actually make comparison shopping worthwhile is right there.

30 years ago, there were 10 options, but the information was hard to get. Now, the information is right there, but there are 1000 options. Does it now take less time, or more?

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