And now we have marketing and brand selling lousy products or total scams.
Also often it's big brands which try to push out turds more agressively.
The real culprit isn't marketing, but capitalism. Marketing is merely a strategy to sell something and retain customers. It's a concept that's been around for a long time. People did marketing before the word existed: Coca-cola was initially sold as a medicine in 1886. A product being bad is more the result of a company attempting to cut costs and increase their margins, or the engineering/dev department just underperforming.
A small brands got more at stakes: Dough (Eve) monitors fumbled the game so badly on their first try, they've pretty much lost all chance of redemption. Moondrop makes objectively great audio products for the price, but their QC is notoriously bad. Other Chinese brands are gaining more momentum because of that. Meanwhile, Sony has been selling pretty average audio gear for the price for a while, but they will still outsell any Chinese brand because they are Sony, and they are everywhere. But Sony had a history of being among the top of the world when it comes to audio. They weren't always so "meh". They still make flagship products that show that the expertise is there; they just don't have any interest in fighting it out with obscure brands.
I've said that before: as long as it's a market where performance can be measured, It's near impossible to climb to the top by selling a scam. A top brand can become complacent, but a complacent brand will never reach the top. Scams are more of a "generate hype fast, and pull out just as fast" kind of deal.
One of the exceptions would be the OG Beats audio. Poor measurement, but they sold a sound that was easy to like for the masses. Headphones were also a fashion item back then. Beats by Apple is objectively a better brand that measures well in reviews, but burned a bridge with most audiophiles old enough to remember their OG products.
