In the grand scheme of things, the customer may have slightly more pull than the cashier ringing up their order, but it’s the CEO and the board of directors that control the narrative. That’s why we’re getting bigger and less fuel efficient vehicles, bigger and more fattening meal portions in restaurants, and bigger less affordable houses.
This is the correct answer. All of the other explanations are dancing around this: no matter what YOU think of a particular product, if a customer is willing to buy it then YOUR opinion must be the wrong one.
I think OPs point was the exact opposite. They give three examples where “matters of taste” are narratives guided by boardroom profit in the last twenty years rather than actual consumer preference.
People didn’t want bigger cars. Corporations made bigger cars to circumvent American fuel efficiency regulations (because it’s cheaper to circumvent a law than it is to make a more efficient engine), and convinced consumers bigger is better. Size difference between the #1 selling truck in 1950 and 1990 is nothing compared to the difference between pre-CAFE and present day.
People don’t want huge, fattening meals when they go out. It’s cheaper for companies to give “more”, “saltier”, and “fattier” meals than it is to create “tastier” ones, and for the most part we’ve been hoodwinked again. I’m talking about the “buy one for here get one free to take home” promotions at Applebee’s.
People have been convinced owning a home is “the American dream”. Construction companies have found they can put a 2800sqft house on a .25 acre plot just as easily as they can a 1400sqft house, so that’s all they build. “Starter homes” aren’t as profitable as they used to be, so the companies are banking on the narrative they’ve created to force people out of apartments and into gigantic houses because it’s the “American dream”.