I know the term well since people grossly mistakingly call me one a fair bit. The difference is that it requires a person to love every product that the brand makes and state that each item is the "best" to the exclusion of all else. People tend to believe this about me which is patently untrue and there is an abundance of evidence of a cross section of my posts that indicate that.

I do have certain preferences at certain price points that I consider to be "best of a given class" but then so do most individuals and indeed review publications with their rankings.

I think it is natural for people to become brand loyal to the extent they expect certain qualities from brands - Honda and Toyota built brand loyalty through the 80s and 90s by building care that didn't fall apart as often as American cars. Indeed, in a UK study a Ford would fail 8 times more often than comparable Toyota models and the Fords also had the double whammy of having more costly (bigger) problems. And this was the BEST American company in the listing. Some GMs were 25 times more likely to fail than a Tercel. And they had the actual repair figures.

So being brand loyal makes sense. The fact that Toyota and Honda have both slipped big time and the American's have improved - while it may be true - it is difficult to go back to a company you had bad experiences with and leave one you had good experiences with.

In Audio - I have certain expectations of Audio Note - and when it doesn't live up to my expectations I may be far harder on them than I would be with a company that usually makes mediocre sounding gear. I expect when Audio Note brings out the AX One loudspeaker that it will be a class leader and game changer at the entry level. And when it's not - then I rip it harder than a B&W where my expectation is lower.

The one thing about Bose is that at least their prices have been coming down over the years. The Acoustimass is about half the price that it used to be. Something like $699 - used to be around $1300-$1500. $699 is about the same price as other similar looking cube systems found in the big box chains. The Wave Radio is only a couple hundred more than competitors not triple the price.