[yamtaddle]

Part of the trouble with these is that, due to companies desiring to maximally exploit price discrimination or because of lack of economies of scale or whatever, the better thing is often unreasonably more expensive, so you don't really get a signal of what people would want without that price-gouging or other price-increasing effects.

Take refrigerators. There are a few little things they could add to every single fridge that'd make them nicer, probably for $20 or so per unit, call it $100 by the time it hits retail. So your $1,100 fridge could be $1,200 but quite a bit nicer. Instead, you can't get that stuff unless you spring for the $2,000+ fridge (think: things like rollers on drawers and shelves, slightly nicer finishes, that kind of thing). Do consumers not "want" that since only a tiny minority buy fridges with those features? No, of course that's not the case. But because there is no "cheap, but with all the cheap bonuses included, so just slightly more expensive" option, it looks that way.

[tshaddox]

I agree with that, and I think it aligns with the claim that customer preferences ought not be blamed.