It addresses it with counter examples that indicate that a "hierarchy of quality" is not something that really exists in consumer products. The fact that so many companies chose not to make the hierarchy clear is an indication that such a hierarchy isn't valuable to them.
Look at the luxury car sector. https://www.audiusa.com/models#sedans/ Can you tell the quality by its naming convention? I can't. I can sort of assume some quality hierarchy by the price though.
The fact that Apple has abandoned the "one phone, one tablet" model indicates to me that it hasn't been a valuable strategy for them.
Car companies (at least European ones) tend to be pretty transparent about this:
- Audi (example): letter (car/SUV/race car)+ number (quality: 1-cheap, 8-luxury)
- BMW: first number is a quality class, two numbers is the Engine size.
- Mercedes: first letter is a quality class, number is the engine.
Other luxury consumer goods use pretty similar schemes, e.g. Audio gear (e.g. bang + olufsen: the higher the number the better, with some number of meaningless zeroes added depending on fashion).
One observation might be that these companies all have halo products that are used to anchor/promote the volume offerings that drive revenue (e.g. The Audi r8 and the a3, the 90k speakers and the 1k set)
> Audi (example): letter (car/SUV/race car)+ number (quality: 1-cheap, 8-luxury) - BMW: first number is a quality class, two numbers is the Engine size. - Mercedes: first letter is a quality class, number is the engine.
You need to already know the brand to know this.
> (quality: 1-cheap, 8-luxury)
How high does it go? If they decide to turn it up to 11 tomorrow, is 8 still "luxury"?
I can't agree that this sort of versioning is any more transparent.
> (e.g. The Audi r8 and the a3, the 90k speakers and the 1k set)
This means nothing unless you already know the brand. There's going to be a minimum set of knowledge required to understand these versioning schemes.
Look at the luxury car sector. https://www.audiusa.com/models#sedans/ Can you tell the quality by its naming convention? I can't. I can sort of assume some quality hierarchy by the price though.
The fact that Apple has abandoned the "one phone, one tablet" model indicates to me that it hasn't been a valuable strategy for them.