Like Kirosia said, it's marketing. People are sheep. Tell them what to do and appear to be reasonably credible, and they'll do it without question. This sadly even goes for desire. Tell people what they want, and (since many people can't figure out what the hell they want, anyway), they'll adopt what you tell them. Then offer them the very thing you just told them they want, and they'll buy it in droves. Why are Bose and Beats and Skullcandy considered fashionable? Well, in aesthetics there are certain objective quantities (proportion, color palate, etc), but in the case of the above, it's merely because somebody told us that they were. And, usually, that somebody is the maker (imagine that!).
Audiophiles really aren't any different as a whole. Tell them a cable will make worlds of difference and some of them will pay four figures. Tell them a
bag of pebbles or the
Tice Clock will improve their rig, and a few (thankfully not very many) will bite. I like to think audiophiles still carry a certain sophistication in determining what makes for good sound, but that doesn't mean they're infallible. It comes down to the individual. I personally resent marketing and thus am extremely sensitive to marketing attempts. I was also once a psychology major so I'm somewhat aware of the underlying processes that go into marketing. Advertising uses a lot of the research in social psychology conducted in the last century, though of course many of the principles were known long before science categorized them.
But the basic gist is just what I said: tell people what they want, then offer it to them. Works every time.
