Your experience echoes mine. I've been into a couple of Bose stores. For no other reason than when I've been stuck at a Mall with family as wives shopped. Exactly the kind of customer that Bose tries to lure.
Bose's genius has always been in their marketing. We all love to bash Bose (for good reason), but they are a shrewdly run business. Commercials, sponsorships, & partnerships with car manufacturers; it's all about exposure. They've dumped tons of money into those Bose stores too, and they put them in high-traffic areas like shopping & outlet malls. And in my experience, often in "man-store-deficient" malls. Typical guys flock to them because there's nothing else to do. And if they haven't taken the time or energy to research what other brands sound like, they end up buying $4,000 cube systems that are sonically annihilated by $1,000 systems from a multitude of other manufacturers.
I've known a lot of people who are very proud of their Bose systems. You know, showing it off at a dinner/superbowl party or talking about it at work, etc. I'm polite, and so I try not to be a jerk about it, but I always ask about what other brands they listened to before deciding on Bose. In every case I can remember, the answer basically is, "None. I didn't need to. I just heard that Bose was the best." Ignorance is bliss.
People are, in general, naive. We believe what we're told. We like shiny things and flashing lights. We like to be sold on a product. Nicely-dressed & groomed salespeople in a clean, modern, "chic" store alter people's perceptions of the product. There's a reason Dolce & Gabbana can sell $1,000 shoes, and Louis Vuitton can sell $10,000 luggage. Some of that value is quality (sometimes more, sometimes less), but some of that price is simply marketing & image hype. Bose stores work on the same principle, with even less quality & even more hype.
Now personally, I don't care if people buy products based solely on marketing hype and image. It's their life & their money. Bose is there for that. But I think a lot of people buy Bose because it's convenient. Their massive marketing has put their name in the minds of millions of people. Bose springs to mind when un-sonically-experienced people want "good" audio gear, because that's how it's marketed. But every time I see a Bose store, I just wish there was an Axiom, Energy, Paradigm, B&W, Dynaudio, etc store next to it so that people would have an
equal opportunity to hear what *real* speakers sound like in comparison.
Oh, and the best way to screw around with a Bose salesman? Start asking about power outputs and frequency response. That's always fun.
