Also, in lieu of actual information, social proof (buying whatever everyone else buys) is a pretty good shortcut for picking the right thing. That's why we have such a strong compulsion for it; if everyone else eats berries from that tree, it probably won't poison you. If everyone else buys ipods, they probably play your music well enough to get by.
This bothers the heck out of rational optimizers like we people who frequent HN, but the average person simply doesn't care enough.
Perhaps the average person doesn't care enough because it is not rational to care too much. It takes time to fully optimize any decision, and time is precious.
But this leaves the question: Do you expose yourself to the advertising? Which advertising? If you don't expose yourself to ANY advertising, how are you supposed to choose things when you are standing in the store with no phone reception and no 5 year failure data? You take a deep breath, relax, and just buy whichever one you respond most to.
How is a small upstart company supposed to establish a reputation for quality in such an environment? Does a reputation for quality actually indicate true quality?
If a luxury brand item fails every few months and you have to take it in for complementary repair/replacement, how do you end up feeling? I used to laugh at people who bought super high-end luxury goods that I know from data are made from cheap materials.
But the reality is that the high-end company stands behind their product and they replace it when it falls apart since with their fat margins they can easily replace the products that have problems. The customer ends up happy. If you buy a "best of breed" product from a tiny company with razor-thin margins, chances are they will be gone by the time you are struck by a need to seek their help.
This is really hard for me to internalize, given that for many classes of mechanical products the benefit of super-over-optimizing is that you end up with a purchase that lasts for maybe 10x as long, which helps us try to ignore the reality that for most purchases we over-optimize, all we end up with is having wasted hours of time and decision-making energy for little noticeable benefit.