Riffman, there are so many ways I could go with your comments (and most of them would involve thread hijacking) it makes my mind spin. Some thoughts are:
The French haven't discovered the low-carb diet because most of them just know to eat less.
Americans just want what is fast and easy and don't know food the way the French do.
Getting back to audio - if you hang out here long enough you'll realize that different people have different thresholds for making the purchase. Some of us do weeks of research and go to the same 3 audio stores 5 times each and then get online and call and talk to Alan and then get in touch with our brother-in-law the music PhD and sound engineer (at least that is what I did), etc. before we ultimately are willing to part with the cash. My friend went to one store one time and got his Bose system. The way I see it, we can't all be totally educated on every purchase (including restaurants) that we make - and that tells me two things:
1) For major purchases I should use resources like Consumer Reports and other product review references like this site.
2) We will always be susceptible to some level of marketing - but in general I think that for a company/product to thrive in the marketplace they must be providing a decent product at a decent price before the marketing/advertising stuff will really work.
