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It would probably be a stretch and overreach, but the angle I would take is that they are competing not on the merit of their products.

Consider airline miles. Each time I purchase a ticket, instead of choosing the best deal (fair competition), I am incentivized to choose an airline I have chosen in the past so as not to fragment my points across several accounts. And of course, these "rewards" are all a price passed on to the consumer.

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I have been buying flights for 20 years and not once has that crossed my mind.

It goes:

Number of stops -> arrival/departure time -> layover time -> cost.

I also feel like I only ever have 1 nonstop flight option, maybe 2. Maybe the biggest airports have sufficiently redundant flights, but even then, surely most people know points are worth 1% at most, and in my experience, flight prices differ by hundreds.

I would be confused if I learned people were buying flights based on points/miles. I assume the miles/points are mainly utilized by very frequent travelers, or people using credit card rewards.

Many, many people (including myself) have cost as their first concern, with a deep gulf between other influencing factors

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