> Most people don't buy homes, cars, mattresses, with any regularity so whatever badwill you generate will be irrelevant 10-20 years down the line and likely bo

> Most people don't buy homes, cars, mattresses, with any regularity so whatever badwill you generate will be irrelevant 10-20 years down the line and likely born by a different seller. One scummy trick in that area is owning multiple brands. My understanding is the appliance market is very consolidated (basically 2 main players own almost all the brands). They've carefully maintained the separate identities of the brands they acquired, even as they consolidated design/production, so any "badwell" they create will have a good chance of just causing the customer to switch to another one of their products. There probably should be some kind of "reverse-trademark" law that requires companies to maintain only one brand in a product area. Trademark is about allowing them to protect their reputation from bad actors, and my "reverse-trademark" would protect consumers from using multiple trademarks to avoid the consequences of a bad reputation.