Your comment here inspired an entire blog post, so I will address the issues you raise there. The post is called:

Follow-up on Connoisseurism, Now with Literary Theorists!

Please read that and fire back.

Now is this last example something different, moving from a debate about mere personal taste (or more likely, brand recognition) versus the banter of connoisseurs, who are laying claim to some proper knowledge and experience of the products they are discussing?

Eventually, some of those kids in my grade school became mechanics. Maybe they have the same opinion about Chevys over Fords or vice versa, but now they ought have a reasonably decent ability to make an informed decision.

I guess I believe that all knowledge is good. It’s good to know why you like the things that you like. Using wine and coffee people as examples are perhaps misleading because these particular connoisseurs are notorious “snobs” (wine snob, coffee snob).

You talked about our friend at Mars liking French press coffee and free trade grounds, but I would suspect he did not discuss free trade grounds based on its distinct flavor of liberty and justice (he’s a snob/connoisseur for digging the French press, but he’s socially conscious for purporting free trade grounds).

You are taking on some considerably large, complex topics here, but I tend to buy into the idea of large corporations selling us an idea which we ultimately care too much about. It’d be useful to hear input from Marketing students (and, equally, those in the Marketing field), but I’m pretty sure that’s the goal of advertising. And people buy into it. McDonald’s pride, Mountain Dew pride, Belgian beer pride. If you can smell a keen attachment to such products among the people, you can believe in “All I want”.