It's actually with both, but more with Monster than the consumer. It does sadden me that marketing campaigns and tie ins such as this are as successful as they are, and that more people don't take the time to research before they buy, but demand is not a finite, independent phenomenon. Market demand, especially in the market for non-essential, luxury goods (for most people headphones are non-essential anyhow
) must be crafted and cultivated. I would posit that if every consumer had a reasonable understanding of the relative cost-to-produce, merits, competition and alternatives to the likes of something like Beats or Bud, there'd be a whole lot less volume getting sold for both. Insofar as that, I not only fault, but am morally outraged by a company that has largely premised its business model on reinforcing the ignorance of its consumers. It's one thing to offer an ultra-luxury good that few are going to deem worth the ask, but that is of undeniably superior quality, or to offer a lower cost, high value added product that may not live up to the standards of its more expensive brethren but nevertheless represents a respectable level of quality at a given price point. I have no problem with companies trying to make an honest profit. What bothers me is when companies like Monsanto hire 80 full time staff members to spy on independent farmers who still refuse to use their genetically patented soybeans, and sue them if there's so much as a bean of cross-pollination (or for that matter even if there isn't, not like the small farmers can afford millions of dollars to fight frivolous lawsuits...), or when companies like Bose or Monster offer middling quality level products at exorbitant prices, market the hell out of them making ridiculous claims that their real world performance can't back, pay "neutral" publications to hype them up and then threaten to sue anyone who says anything negative about them (fortunately truth is a full defense to libel
). Just ask Kurt Denke, the owner of Blue Jeans Cable. Monster tried to sue him 2008 because he was making a better product for less, figuring they'd send him a big dog cease and desist letter and that he wouldn't know what to do. Alas, he was a litigator for 19 years, but that's another story. Anyhow, for me, that kind of behavior is no different from securities fraud or short-selling people's mortgages. It's little removed from theft as far as I'm concerned.
I once had dinner with a congressman who shall remain nameless who explained to me, in all sincerity, that corporate lobbyists in congress were a necessity because they tend to represent the primary source of factual information on any given topic for lawmakers, and that said politicians wouldn't have time to educate themselves at all on anything if it weren't for them. He explained that, oftentimes, the only source of information whatsoever he might have on a given piece of legislation was given to him by a lobbyist. And he considered this to be "better than nothing." This kind of cronyism ends up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it continues to aggregate wealth in a smaller number of more and more well-connected hands. So, given that we Americans at least (and honestly we're one of the less corrupt countries in this regard) find ourselves with politicians who think the internet is made of tubes running IT subcommittees (and subsequently producing such wonderfully convoluted, confused pieces of legislation as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), in my mind, we need to vote with our dollars. When consumers educate themselves, they swing the pendulum of demand generation back into their own hands. The more people that refuse to buy what they're told to buy, that support the producers that do things the right way, the more viable an ethical, responsible business model becomes. If knowledge is power, apathy will enslave you.
