Quote Originally Posted by JSE
Yeah, I have to agree with you there. They seem to prey on the uninformed.

True story. I was talking to my wife's boss about a year ago. He was telling me how he was getting ready to buy a Bose system for his $1m plus house because that's what all his neighbors had. He's pretty materialistic. Initially, my stomach started to tighten into knots. But, then I thought I would help him. We met for lunch a couple of days later and we went to Tweeter. We first listened to a Bose system that was about $3k, I think? He was impressed and said, "see, that's why I am getting Bose." Poor man. We then listen to the Boston Acoustic speakers I own. He was BLOWN away. He thought they were the best he had ever heard. We then proceeded to listen to Vienna, Sonus and then Martin Logan. He was like a kid in a candy shop. Needless to say the Boston's fell off the "new" list as well.

Now? He has a 5.1 Martin Logan system driven by B&K components. He totally get's off on watching his neighbors drool now. I have created a Monster. He does not even have the system calibrated and really could care less about doing it. I have to admit I am pretty blown away by the sound. Ah, to have big money!

JSE
Pretty insane what marketing and groupthink can accomplish, eh? Friends of mine who worked in AV sales always had to combat the preconceived advantage that Bose had with a lot of buyers. It got to the point that one of those stores paid for their own Bose Acoustimass system so that customers could do their own A/B comparisons, since Bose displays in other stores don't allow for that. They didn't lose as many sales after that.

When I was speaker shopping and overhearing the banter between other customers and the sales reps, at some point Bose always entered the discussion and it was interesting to see how the sales reps responded. One of them cupped his hand over his mouth to "demonstrate" what Bose speakers sound like. Another one proceeded to demo a system in the same price range as the Lifestyle 35. Strange thing is that the customer admitted that the store's comparably priced system blew away the Lifestyle, but still went on about how he thought that Bose had all that "superior technology" in their products. Not sure if the sales rep made the sale.

Another friend got it from both ends. His store finally decided to pick up Bose after losing one too many sales from customers who'd come in, listen to a system that they admitted sounded better, but still wind up buying Bose from a competitor because they just couldn't believe that anything could possibly be better, even if their ears were telling them the truth. When my friend's store picked up Bose, he said that the store had to clear out a dedicated demo room for the Bose products, with no competing products present. During a training session, the Bose reps went into the sales points and did some sound demos. Keep in mind that this store carried Klipsch, Energy, Boston, and Polk among others, and while the Bose rep was chiming on about how great the Bose sound was as the disc was playing, the sales reps were all looking at one another like who's this guy kidding?

Once they started carrying Bose, it was great for the sales reps because the commissions on the Bose units are higher and they were more often impulse buys. The customer would come in and ask about Bose. The sales rep would demo the unit, and the customer buys it without demoing anything else. Easy sale, easy profit. My friend would demo other products only if the customer asked, and he did try to move them into other product lines if the customer was open-minded. With Bose, there's no upgrade path, but with a component system, there are more opportunities to add on and upgrade later on, so he was also thinking with his pocketbook. But, very often, the customers came into the store already convinced that Bose was the best, and no demo or comparison was going to disuade them from that belief.

At least your friend was open minded enough to get blown away by a different brand, and believe that something actually was better than Bose. It is pretty easy to create monsters in audio. Just recently, my wife's friend and her husband came over. Her husband is into home theatre (has a full sized satellite dish in the backyard), but had gone with a mismatched set of speakers for years. I had just finished matching my surround setup, so he gave it a listen and was pretty floored by how much better the imaging and overall coherency was. Less than a month later, I heard that he had swapped out his entire speaker setup for a matched top-of-the-line Def Tech set. Ironically, even though those tower speakers physically have low WAF, the sound actually met with the wife's approval. She told my wife, "Gosh, my husband's loud movies don't sound as annoying as they did before!" Who knew that new speakers could contribute to domestic tranquility?