I'm not so sure. Recently our dishwasher crapped out. I've already repaired it once, but this time something else broke and we decided we were done with it. So, time to buy a new one. I reckon myself to be a pretty good value shopper, but shopping for a dishwasher got to me. Knowing that there are many fewer manufacturers than brand names, I set out to find what I though was the best value. I wanted to find a good quality one that will last a long time and I wanted to pay less for it than an average consumer would. It was overwhelming, I'm sure I could have done a better job, but I had other things to do as well; I couldn't/wouldn't make this task my primary job. In the end we just punted and bought a Miele, a fairly expensive brand with a good reputation. I'm sure that given enough time we could have saved 30% to 50% of the money we spent, but it would have taken a lot more of my time and we risked paying too much for a substandard appliance.