KitchenAid Did It Right 87 Years Ago

I'm not sure what appliance (or really at this point any) manufacturers are meant to do - if you're competing for the overwhelming majority of consumers price is basically the primary discriminator between products. If your competitor uses thinner steel and save $5 on price they end up at the top of all the lists, and the marketing life time for an appliance is far short of the actual product lifetime even for budget products, so by the time the difference in build quality is apparent you're long past the point of anyone writing reviews about it.

The alternative is you target low volume consumers for whom the cost is secondary concern, but that's a niche market where build quality gets even more expensive (due to low volume), and so even with huge mark up you're unlikely to make huge amounts of profit over your entire business.

If you try to target the high end of consumers (prosumer kitchen appliances?) you're competing with either gimmickware (which is low quality and low margin) or the mass producers putting "high quality" shells on their mass produced products, so they're able to make more profit than you while also undercutting you.

I know people like to blame manufacturers for making stuff that doesn't last as long, but it's consumers choosing cheaper products over higher quality ones that created this world.