It's a bit of both, to be honest. E.g., the Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul have very different sounds due to different pickups, electrics, tone woods,

It's a bit of both, to be honest. E.g., the Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul have very different sounds due to different pickups, electrics, tone woods, etc. People will buy a particular type of guitar because they want a particular sound. Choice of amplifier also comes into play here. OTOH, there is definitely brand cachet/snobbery. A Gibson Les Paul will almost always get more respect than a Les Paul copy from another brand. What I'm less aware of, except from perhaps a few niche guitar makers I know, is brand snobbery of the form of, "Well, Fender are better than Gibson and Gretsch because blah", or vice versa (people do tend to be a bit snobby about Ibanez though, for some reason). Most people I know buy premium guitars (and that's a loaded term in itself) for the sound rather than the brand... except that, as I've already suggested, they will often prefer a well-known brand over a "knock-off" or lower end brand: so "serious" musicians will generally buy Fender rather than Squire (low end brand owned by Fender). Different genres of music can lead to different brand preferences. More "classic" music genres tend to favour Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Rickenbacker, and so on, whereas newer or more experimental genres tend to favour Ibanez, ESP, PRS, Jackson, etc. This is more of an observation than a hard and fast rule though, and there will always be exceptions, like the Fender Jaguar which has been a firm favourite of some more alternative bands since the late 80s. Hopefully that rather rambling answer makes some sense.