Hoo better?
The name Hoover used to have an immeasurable amount of behind it, as indeed did Electrolux. The difference between the two brands was that Hoover sat on it's laurels and relied heavily gimmicks, variety and of course it's loyal customer base to make the sales, whilst Electrolux always seemed more sophisticated, with a much, much smaller product range, and always offering something more tangible for the customer. Also, I felt that with Hoover the consumer was buying into the 'belief' that it was high quality, whereas with Electrolux that quality could be seen and felt for oneself. This is why both brands were able to do so very well, but as has been pointed out, there were a good deal of other much cheaper vacuum cleaners on sale, many of which had features which aped those of top-end brands.
Moulinex, to use a name which has already been mooted- was one such excellent example of a cleaner which did such, and as I said once before, I know of a customer who went and bought two Moulinex Master cleaners for just a little more than she had intended to pay for one Hoover Turbopower machine. Her reasons for doing so was that last Hoover cleaner had not lived up to expectation and had cost her a lot of money; when it broke down it was her intention to buy another for downstairs and have the original cleaner repaired for upstairs use. Upon seeing the Moulinex cleaner, she opted for two of those and no repair on her original cleaner. Some say buy cheap, buy twice, but when one gets the chance to acquire much more than half of something else for around half the price, there is much temptation to do so.
I was always surprised not to see more Moulinex cleaners brought in for repair. I can only conclude they were either not that popular (which I very much doubt is the case), or they rarely broke down (again I feel not likely), or perhaps more often was the case that the owner of such a cleaner had a low expectation of it from the outset and was unwilling to spend money repairing a budget product.
