Some minor issues

The way things look are so important. Design is an indisputable part of marketing.

Example: last weekend our washing machine broke down and we decided to buy a new one. In a segment were differences between different products are getting marginal (or of marginal importance) design becomes a key decision feature. And so it did in our case.

I’m not saying its absolute, and in fact I quite don’t care how our machine looks. But you have to decide. In my believe there are margins you decide on rationally: what’s about the amount of money you want to spend, what are the specs (in washing machine language: volume, rotation speed, functionalities ..), maybe some brands, .. . With this information you look at the goods to narrow your selection down. But the way things look is the final decision criteria. It makes you pick product X out of the selection that was left.