Nike avoids selling its shoes to Wal-Mart like the plague.
A typical suspension from HTCH costs about .85 cents. Their improved suspension sells for about .97 cents. Its a 10 cent part but HTCH adds a couple of pennies to its sale price to maintain their 20% gross margins. Of course the head manufacturer then marks the product up to maintain his gross margins and then the disk drive manufacturer marks it up to improve his margins and it goes on and on until a consumer pays an extra 8% tax at the register and takes it home. That 10 cent part might eventually add a buck or so to the end cost.
Indeed Computers could benefit from more stable power supplies, bigger heat sinks, larger cases, better fans and cooling, and higher grade disk drives but in the end you will see $50 - $100 of extra cost as a result by the time the consumer takes it home.
Computers and hard drives are a cutthroat business and the prices of them have fallen amazingly since their introduction. IBM used to make the absolute best hard drives and they had to exit the industry because they couldnt compete on price. A host of disk drive companies has gone bankrupt, gone private, reissued stock, been absorbed or merged, and many other happenstances. A buck per hard drive might not seem to matter but call up Compaq and try to sell them 100 million of them and see if Compaq cares. Thats $100 million in cash to the bottom line and thats the kind of money that even former CFO's start to notice. HDD makers are smart and competitive and cutthroat and as you say will do most anything to get an advantage and that usually doesnt include paying extra for the best parts. Joe consumer isnt going to find out who made the disk drive head and blame those guys for using cheap parts. The idea that a crashed disk will happen almost becomes accepted in the computer world and many if not most people can pull a hard drive out and change it with relative ease. For most, it takes awhile to wear out a hard drive that can last 10s of thousands of hours. Still the point remains that for not much more money it could do better.
As for racing, they do often use high quality synthetics. I know racers that use mostly what want in their cars with perhaps a quart or two of their "sponsered" oil so they can tell fans that indeed they use whichever oil helps them pay the bills.
As for the old school thinking that anybody can run most any cheap oil and do fine then perhaps I will disagree. We expect more from cars these days. We have fuel injectors and fewer cylinders and lighter weight engines that are more sensitive to wear. We expect high gas mileage and adding 200 pounds to the cars weight with Iron/Steel engines over Aluminum engines isnt done much these days. Higher RPMs, low weight aluminum and other alloys, fuel injection and turbocharging add higher stress to the protective abilitites of oil. I recently saw a good friend lose his engine at less than 50K miles and he changed his oil with frequency using dino oils.
Everyone has to decide for themselves if saving a few pennies per quart is a good idea. On a percentage basis few of the millions of people that buy oil each day at Wal-Marts across the world come here and educate themselves as well as the typical BITOG poster/reader.
On a percentage basis, Wal-Mart doesnt sell as much M1 as you think. It earns its spot on the shelf and consumers demand it but its not their top seller. I often ask the WM employees about it and they usually shrug. Those guys know what sells because they stock it. M1 isnt even #1 at Autozone where customers are usually more demanding and informed about cars than the typical WM customer. WM doesnt offer M1 in their lube express areas unless the customer goes in the store and purchases it and hands it to the workers. M1 is a convenience for customers but not a priority for WM.
WM is not a succesful corporate citizen to those who supply its products. There are many stories of WM forcing its suppliers into bankruptcy by demanding lower and lower prices. Sunbeam, Gitano, Vlassic Pickles and many others have entered bankruptcy. Sometimes different owners emerge and the name goes on but WM certainly has squeezed a supplier or two into death. WM buyers dont care if a corporation lives, dies, makes money or goes bankrupt. They want the lowest prices for their customers and they push hard to demand suppliers sell them merch at the lowest cost. WM will go open a factory in China in a heartbeat and cut the supplier out of the picture to save a penny or two on a pair of socks. And that is a fact. Something like 16-17% of all China's exports go into WM stores. If you have a brand name then it better be good if you are in bed with WM because sitting next to it will be some no name house brand that WM sells with a lower price.
Ultimately, consumers choose what they get. BITOG readers and contributors generally care about their vehicles and want to maximize their performance, potential, and longevity. The typical consumer however wants to save pennies when they shop. Maybe they plan on trading their car in after 3 years and dont care about long term engine care. Maybe they live on a budget and every penny counts. Maybe they think oil is oil and it doesnt matter what they use. Maybe they think that Quaker state has given them good use for 40 years so why change to a synthetic?
Id still say that over 90% of consumers is relatively uninformed about the merits of oil and they buy oil based on price and convenience and perhaps association with a name brand.
Many people dont care if a car could go 250,000 miles instead of 140,000 and for them an oil choice doesnt matter. They get 140K miles on their cars and they are happy and want a new one anyway.
Others like my friend throw a rod at 40K something miles and are somewhat upset. But even then the thought of a new car is vaguely comforting.
Oil matters but many dont care. Those here are outside of the box and yet I find their concern strangely appealing. Im not going to sleep with GC under my pillow but I might try a couple of oil changes with it and see if it can clean my engine and enhance my vehicles lifespan. The fact that perhaps I could have saved $20 bucks by buying a case of oil at a WM instead of GC at AZ is a moot point if my car goes an extra 10K miles on the GC.
Happy Motoring All,
Bugshu