I suspect that this is it; we’re seeing the product of real-world complications rather than game-theoretic calculations by consumers. I haven’t looked too deeply into it myself, but geography alone should serve as an explanation. Companies closer to their customers have a natural advantage in distribution and in local connections with e.g. storeowners and politicians, letting them get a head start. Getting big enough, they can then contest more distant markets, and get a share of customers who just like the design slightly better, assume a slightly lower/higher price isn’t/is cancelled out by differences in quality, or had a bad experience with a different brand even where the geographic advantage dissipates.
Even through random chance, you can end up with a manager who’s always had better experience with brand A pencils stocking his department with them, leading employees buying school supplies for their children to go with the brand they know from work. This creates new, fairly durable pockets of favoritism that will buoy even objectively slightly-worse brands, keeping them in the game and expanding the frontier along which different brands compete for shelving space. On top of that, stores have a natural bias to stock multiple brands, both to give them leverage in negotiations with suppliers and to give off the appearance of choice and plentitude.
Have you thought of researching the history of the pencil industry, or reading trade periodicals, in order to find out why there are so many?
I suspect that this is it; we’re seeing the product of real-world complications rather than game-theoretic calculations by consumers. I haven’t looked too deeply into it myself, but geography alone should serve as an explanation. Companies closer to their customers have a natural advantage in distribution and in local connections with e.g. storeowners and politicians, letting them get a head start. Getting big enough, they can then contest more distant markets, and get a share of customers who just like the design slightly better, assume a slightly lower/higher price isn’t/is cancelled out by differences in quality, or had a bad experience with a different brand even where the geographic advantage dissipates.
Even through random chance, you can end up with a manager who’s always had better experience with brand A pencils stocking his department with them, leading employees buying school supplies for their children to go with the brand they know from work. This creates new, fairly durable pockets of favoritism that will buoy even objectively slightly-worse brands, keeping them in the game and expanding the frontier along which different brands compete for shelving space. On top of that, stores have a natural bias to stock multiple brands, both to give them leverage in negotiations with suppliers and to give off the appearance of choice and plentitude.
No, and that is a good idea.