The fact that people choose the cheapest of something does not mean they don't care about quality. It just means that, in that specific market, the pain of a lower quality product is not enough to affect their purchasing decisions much.
To prove this, imagine if airline A & B had similar very cheap prices (and the attendant poor service that comes with it), but airline B has slightly (and noticeably) better service than airline A. Most people will choose airline B.
>It just means that, in that specific market, the pain of a lower quality product is not enough to affect their purchasing decisions much.
That, what you just wrote, your own words, not my, but your, assertion, literally and explicitly means that people don't care about quality.
>but airline B has slightly (and noticeably) better service than airline A. Most people will choose airline B.
This is demonstrably false and every airline that has tried has either failed or been subsidized by their national government. (Signed, a former Continental Airlines devotee.)
Plenty of people will never, ever, fly RyanAir. And plenty of people choose an airline based on the airline's loyalty rewards program which gives them a higher-quality product (earlier boarding, more leg room, easier changes to flights). It's quite routine among people who travel a lot.
If no one ever cared about airline quality, there would be no first-class or even economy plus class. And yet basically every airline has them.
Yes, airplane travellers are incredibly price conscious--that's the nature of a near-commodity market. But nearly every single flight has a significant fraction of travelers who have paid more for a higher-quality product.
>If no one ever cared about airline quality, there would be no first-class or even economy plus class. And yet basically every airline has them.
I consider 95% of all people in a population to be the "close enough please shut the fuck up about it and be reasonable for once in your god damned life" threshold where "everybody" becomes an acceptable descriptor.
What percentage of people will ever, in their entire lives, fly first class?
To prove this, imagine if airline A & B had similar very cheap prices (and the attendant poor service that comes with it), but airline B has slightly (and noticeably) better service than airline A. Most people will choose airline B.