> huge middle segment, where you'd pay extra, but you got better quality. That middle segment has more or less disappeared
This is pure opinion, but I view that as the result of things like PE firms, activist investors, etc. who basically make the case "People respect $BRAND and think we're worth spending 30% more than the cheapest competitor. But what if we kept our prices exactly where they are, keep our advertising focused on how our tradition of quality is our whole reason for existing, but we shift production of our product/service to the same cheapest-possible way the cheap competitors do? At first this was a big gamble, as theoretically customers will notice when their car or their toaster starts falling apart in 4 years, instead of the 10 or 15 years the old one lasted, but this "Moneyballization" of most brands has been so pervasive across the whole marketplace that customers now can't choose "the brand that didn't do that" because ALL the brands did that (or were bought by a brand that does do that). So it's become a completely risk-free strategy.