> In a world without marketing, there would be 1000 identical versions of the same product and I would have no idea where to begin

This is still very much the case. Marketing is a signal of exactly one thing: marketing budget. At least with the anonymous clones, I can be somewhat certain that when my friend says “yah I got a pair of running shorts from [insert random company here] and they’ve been pretty good so far”, their decision was made on the basis of their direct experience because that’s all they can go on.