[reportingsjr]

I don't think the majority of people care about quality. I think most focus mainly on price.

See Walmart for an example of this. They force manufacturers of otherwise decent stuff to make lower quality versions of products to sell only at Walmart, just to lower the end price.

Considering that Walmart is one of the largest companies in the world, this seems to be a winning tactic.

[oblio]

People only care about quality for a very few select goods in their lives. Most of them are of hedonistic nature and/or are publicly visible so are a status symbol.

Everything else will be as cheap as can be bought (so probably 90% of purchases).

[justin_oaks]

People are unable to accurately judge quality before they make a purchase, and often well after the purchase the quality is uncertain too. Who knows how long it'll take before you find out that your cheap USB charger was made of shoddy materials and will catch on fire when it fails?

But you can know the exact price before the purchase.

People are optimizing based on the information they have.

[aidenn0]

Amazon doesn't have the best prices though; it's big selling point is, IMO, convenience (this is IMO a bigger factor for Walmart as well; while they heavily advertise a few particularly aggressively priced items, most of Walmart's SKUs are pried middle-of-the-road).