I recently purchased some Shure E4c headphones for my iPod. I'd never even heard of them before searching for headphones, but Shure understand this. Their marketing campaign isn't aimed at me, it's not aimed at even iPod users - it's aimed at professionals who understand the difference between high-quality sound.

They're not going to spend millions of dollars telling an audience that their iPod headphones aren't worth using (which, I might add, is true) because changing that audiences view costs more than the return they would ever see. Instead, they focus on exactly who is likely to buy them. Therefore, I don't ever hear about Shure or see them as 'recommended buys' on the websites I visit. Instead, they've gained a name that means I'll approach them when I know they're better than anyone else. Truth is, I already have a pair of Etymotic 6i's, and the Shure cost almost double. And maybe I'm lying to myself, but I can certainly tell a difference in the sound quality. Does this consistute the price difference? To me it does.

Yet, again, Shure know there's almost no point trying to prove this to the average user. Instead they need not focus on sales and let us move toward them based on their reputation and price being higher than the competition. After all, there has to be a reason for this, doesn't there?