Bose did an excellent job of marketing itself over the years. If 'excellent' is taken in a strictly functional business-oriented consumerist meaning. I never liked their product (although I did own the first gen 301--a truly mediocre loudspeaker--but it was small and easy to drive). Nevertheless Bose achieved a string of marketing (and quasi-engineering) achievements:
1. 901. One of the first loudspeakers to get away from the then typical acoustic suspension sealed box type of 'closed-in' sound. A harbinger of 'surround' effects that would later become ubiquitous in home theater set ups (albeit the Bose implementation was very primitive within that context, and required a lot of very expensive watts for the day).
2. The first audio manufacturer I heard of (and the only one I can think of) that had the 'nads to take a journalist to court over a 'bad' review. Thus anticipating the current Internet trend of censoring unliked opinions.
3. Bose Wave. Recognizing the pent-up consumer purchasing power of retired 'sit at home' Greatest/Silent Generations, along with understanding this demographic's listening tastes (politically oriented AM talk radio). Leveraging that knowledge by paying the very popular daytime radio voice, Rush Limbaugh, to bark for their product, selling who knows how many tens of thousands units of unbelievably ugly and mid-bass heavy table-top radios for an unheard of price. Now McIntosh has taken over that job (LOL).
https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/products/lifestyle/RS200
4. Offering the exploding home PC market small speakers that were better than the typical 'whatever's in the box' generic or Creative Labs PC speakers, through stores such as Circuit City and Best Buy, for a hefty price. Thus anticipating the current-day prevalence of powered 'monitor-type' desktop speakers.
5. Noise cancelling 'business-class' headphones.
Bose mall stores attempted to emulate the 'Apple' thing, but no one has really been able to do that, successfully. The deal with Apple was that at the time the company had Steve Jobs who was definitely cool, and who sold products that appealed to Gen X, Y, and some Millenials. Amar Bose was definitely not ever considered cool, but whose products appealed to the almost extinct Greats, Silents and even Boomers--ones who always wanted 901s, or did but later sold them, and retained fond memories. In a way Bose is like Harley-Davidson whose business model relies on selling high-priced not very state-of-the-art motorcycles to an ever decreasing consumer demographic.
However all that is, brick and mortar stores are pretty much a thing of the past--or soon will be. It seems.
