This is why in my opinion, Amsoil would be the best offering if we were having this discussion about a powersports shop. Motorcycle and ATV owners are more likely to recognize the brand, but even the ones that don't instantly recognize it would often be receptive to that type of product education and spring for the up-charge, because they have passion for those vehicles.
Regular automotive customers just want to pass emissions, be safe, and not get stranded. To me, trying to up-sell Amsoil to the average automotive public sounds like a very uphill battle because they'll have no idea what they added cost is about and they won't understand (or care) why it matters if the cheaper oil is considered good enough anyway.
And since both the high and low offerings at these shops are going to be synthetic, you can't even position it as a typical, "do you want the conventional oil or synthetic?". It's more like, "do you want synthetic oil A or synthetic oil B?". That's a tougher sell in my opinion because they sound the same to most people. Synthetic oil B better bring something to the table in the eyes of the average customer, or else customers will just be confused as to why there's even a choice. Mobil 1 as a trusted brand would bring something to the table at least that's easily digestible to the most amount of customers.
I don't think that's an uncommon practice.
