Not particularly brand loyal but loyal to my local service centre . They sell a ton of stuff and are great at stocking parts for it all and doing the service work if I cannot . Quanties in Locust Grove Oklahoma , not your regular Napa store at all .
Brand loyalty?
- Thread starter Morgyn Isaac
- Start date
Brand loyalty would likely be dependent on experience with similar equipment of a particular brand. Once an owner has a bad experience with a previously trusted brand, trust is eroded and justifies a close look at other brands.
GearHead36
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I'm brand loyal on 2-cycle equipment. It's Echo or nothing. For 4-cycle equipment, it's a case-by-case situation. I won't buy single cylinder Briggs or Kohlers any more. I'm not wild about MTD products, but I own a Cub Cadet Pro Z. It's commercial, so it has better parts than the residential MTD stuff. I'm in the market for a tractor. I'm leaning toward Kubota, but only because the best and closest dealer is Kubota. I'd be ok with several other brands of tractors, but the closest dealers for some of them are hours away.
Japan's Tanaka when they were still in business. The only manufacturer with a 7 year residential warranty, 3 year commercial. Light, simple, trivial to work on. Still believed the customer was smart enough to make their own carb adjustments.
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Brand loyalty has been perverted and exploited by marketing for the past 25 years. The older well-established companies have shifted much of their manufacturing to foreign countries where labor laws and unions do not exist. Products are made of lesser quality and reduced weight to make them cheaper to ship in bulk quantities.
Quality has tanked and the market is flooded with junk machines and parts that no longer last.
End users are gravitating towards disposable more and equipment is becoming less repairable.
Unless a person is a DIY type, the shop cost of parts and labor to replace a camshaft in a B&S single is more than just buying a new engine these days. People are reluctant to invest in service or repairs, so they just keep buying new machines, run them until they fail and repeat the process.
Now along comes tariffs and new residential riders cost as much as a used car and commercial riders cost as much as some new compact cars.
Quality has tanked and the market is flooded with junk machines and parts that no longer last.
End users are gravitating towards disposable more and equipment is becoming less repairable.
Unless a person is a DIY type, the shop cost of parts and labor to replace a camshaft in a B&S single is more than just buying a new engine these days. People are reluctant to invest in service or repairs, so they just keep buying new machines, run them until they fail and repeat the process.
Now along comes tariffs and new residential riders cost as much as a used car and commercial riders cost as much as some new compact cars.
Kawasaki makes their small engines in MO and NE. One of the first to do so. Toyota, Subaru, Nissan and Honda followed suit. Not everything is made overseas. Tariffs can be avoided. Buy American. Just because it sounds foreign doesn't mean it's not built here by American labor and materials. Some of the engines are built elsewhere but marketing isn't forcing anyone to buy anything. I don't think blaming marketing for retarded consumers is the right path.