I think that for cheap stuff, people don't think too much. They will buy what they found. But if they find a choice of 3 ladles and can know which one is better quality, then the quality will matter.

It's just that they won't spend 2 years finding a Korean store. And for manufacturers, it seems like they make more profit by just building worse quality in the first place.

And that's another point: people do care about quality. Manufacturers do not. Manufacturers care about profit. And economists believe that both align perfectly, for some reason I don't get.