Zulu":ld57rswj said:
People create an affinity for brands for reasons unrelated to comparable quality.
Very possibly so (up to a point) if you're referencing stuff like designer jeans, soft drinks and cosmetics. But with both pipes and pipeweedage, start disappointing people in "comparable quality" and your sales start slipping.
Zulu":ld57rswj said:
Where comparing quality is a brand touchpoint, the dimensions of quality are usually endlessly debated - as in pipes.
Also, of course, true. But partly meaningless also. That no pipe or tobacco will ever command the allegience of
everybody is a given. And of course they'll debate. It wouldn't be much fun if they couldn't. Ford vs. Chevy goes back further than we do.
Still, above and beyond this, Castello and Stanwell are good examples of consistently high quality as a brand touchpoint. As are GLP tobaccos. It isn't all sheer irrationality and successful suggestion. Concensus reputations are earned in the long run.
Zulu":ld57rswj said:
Differences in quality in other categories . . . simply are not consistently measurable across respondent sets.
Back to the impossibility of universal agreement. Some of my most treasured smokers are very old Petersons -- pipes which you very possibly (given your taste) would not even have in your house, let alone in your mouth.
De gustibus non disputandem. Well and good.
But, stepping around that, down here in the less rarefied reaches of smokerdom, if you like one Stanwell, you're likely to like the next one as well, whether it's an armchair pipe for you or a yard pipe. And when somebody like Ian (with his gazillion UberDanes) says he finds little if any difference in smoking quality between an Ivarsson and an old, well-seasoned Stanwell, I'm not surprised. Ditto GLP with his racks of old GBDs.
Because however elusive and arbitrary its perception, there is, in the end, Quality.
(Then again, if I had your stuff, who knows what I'd think ?)
:face: