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But the products aren't better. The Mr Beast burger isn't a better burger than a (ew) mcdonalds burger. Makeup endorsed by a random celebrity isn't better makeup than what people usually use. There are a lot of ways to do things that have partially-correct motivations yet are still wrong. The due diligence is usually only a bit above 'is this a popular product and not literally sex-ponzi-mlmcoin', and sometimes not even that. Is it 'rational' to buy Gwenyth Paltrow's Goop products? Purchasing those partnered products is in a broad sense, a mistake, and "is the heuristic rational or not" is ... kind of irrelevant, because the products themselves are generally worse, and more expensive, than the alternatives.
Kind of reminds me of The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption
Also, this doesn't affect your iphone point, but the $99/$199 iphone is tied to a phone plan ("starting at $35"/mo?), making it not that cheap.
I think you're conflating two different product selection strategies, here.
While maximizing value is a good strategy, it requires investigating every product on the market, which is a huge investment of time (a very precious resource). Another strategy, filtering out the absolute worst with the minimum effort, and going with any of the remaining options does potentially involve paying a premium for a worse product in exchange for time savings, but it's not obvious that his is an irrational move.
In addition to status for visible brands, celebrity endorsements do signal that the product is not the literal worst. To take Gwenyth Paltrow's make-up as an example, I'd be reasonably sure that they contain relatively low levels of skin permeable poisons (at least ones that have an acute effect). Beyond that, if that assumption is violated, they probably have enough money to pay out in a lawsuit.
Those are things I can't be sure about for random things off amazon (or worse, bought in bulk off alibaba, though this would be a probable way to maximize value for my money).
Celebrity endorsements are a strictly less-useful filter for 'the absolute worst' than just googling the industry and picking the most popular product, though. So that doesn't really make sense. Also, i'm pretty sure people who are moved by celebrity endorsements already knew of several 'not-literal-shit' products in the industry the endorsed product is in.
Sure, but it requires slightly more effort (that is to say, more than literally none).
The filter when you go from no effort -> some effort seems to be roughly proportional to when a website goes from no payment -> some (that is to say you lose about 80% or so).
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McD has its own celebrity endorsements, including collaborations with Saweetie and BTS in recent years. For a fairer comparison, whatever white label burger chain MrB is built on top of, I would guess that the quality of the MrB version is higher than the no-name version. Now, I'm willing to concede that the MrB version tacks on a price premium that may or may not make it less of a deal vs. the no-name, but it'd be like how some Porsche model is built on top of a Volkswagen, but even if it costs a lot more as a result, the product should be higher quality because Porsche has a brand to protect so can't just deliver a Volkswagen with a Porsche hood ornament.
I also wonder if we're mostly agreeing with each other very loudly. I realize a celebrity endorsement doesn't magically improve the underlying design and manufacturing of goods and services. I'm mainly pointing out that a general statement that "people are irrational to become more favorable toward one product or service over others by virtue of a non-professionally-aligned celebrity endorsement" is overly simplistic, incomplete, and sometimes flat-out wrong.
Fun take. Maybe Tide should advertise that it's adding trace amounts of estrogen to its pods. That'd shut down any status boosting element among boys.
True, but I assume anyone buying the $700+ iPhones are also on the hook for phone plans starting at $35/mo. I didn't look into the offer closely but the link's commentators referenced something about the phone becoming unlocked after 1-2 months, so anyone really pinching pennies would only have to overpay by maybe $20 or so if they can otherwise find a provider that only charges $25/mo.
I need to push back on this, because, while I'm no expert, I assume Porsches haven't been built on the same steel/frames/bodies as Volkswagens for decades, unless you count the Cayenne and Panamera models. If anything, the 911 was probably the point at which Porsche's engineering started to diverge from the Kafer et al. To build better sports cars and race cars(!), you need to start with more bespoke underpinnings, and the rear-engine VW frames were likely not enough for Porsche come the 1960's or 70's (especially with their front-engine models like the 924).
If anything, you could have used Maybach as your automotive example--those were practically just gussied-up Benzes, and they failed to take off for likely the very reason you point at. (In fact, the Maybach nameplate was recently revived, but now more akin to a trim or special edition of the S-Class.)
I was thinking of the Cayenne. You could dismiss it 10 years ago but not now. It's their most popular model in NA in the most recent quarter!
But I admit I don't know too much about this. I just used it because I was talking about Rolexes and Porsches :D
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Perhaps the most egregious example, a white cotton shirt that says "Supreme" across the front is not any better at 'being a shirt' than one pulled from a five pack of Hanes I got from Wal-Mart.
The price is all based on the logo, which is itself only a signal. And its a signal that reads very differently depending on who receives it.
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