Seems to me that the TAM for a fan is basically infinite for any single company, therefore making a product that is too high quality or long lasting could still get you growing yoy sales for a long time and stay in business.
But you’re probably right that vs competition lowering prices (and quality) they’d lose.
There’s probably an optimum for maximizing sales/growth that doesn’t land on highest quality products in the real world, with non rational consumers, imperfect information etc… sadly.
> There’s probably an optimum for maximizing sales/growth that doesn’t land on highest quality products in the real world, with non rational consumers, imperfect information etc… sadly.
Of course it wouldn't land on highest quality. None of us need fans which last forever. We need fans which last long enough.
In the optimum scenario companies are able to build fans that do just that, but the quality would still not be highest quality compared to what would be possible. And nor should it, since it would force the consumer to pay for gold-plating they neither need nor want to pay for.
There’s probably an optimum for maximizing sales/growth that doesn’t land on highest quality products in the real world, with non rational consumers, imperfect information etc… sadly.