Perceived value is what sells SUVs and double cab pickups to buyers who'd get a better vehicle, and more value for their money, by buying a sedan.
In that arena, size is mostly what accounts for the perceived value. It's a big vehicle, so it must be worth a premium price. In that case, that's the trick because it doesn't cost the manufacturer much more (if anything more) to make the big vehicle than a smaller one, but they can sell it for more on the basis of that perceived value, and thus get a higher profit margin. Even when the sedan has better features, dollar for dollar, most people will still think the bigger vehicle is worth more simply because it is bigger.
That's a different thing than creating something of real quality, that may or may not be noticed by the consumer. For example, the door hinges on my 1969 Saab are over-engineered. It's a part most people will never see or pay attention to. But every time I've pointed them out to anybody with engineering or manufacturing experience they're amused that Saab thought it necessary to build them in the way they did, if not impressed that somebody put so much thought into it in the first place!
In camera terms, I think many of the qualities of Leica cameras are inherent in their design and construction, they're not superficial (or weren't anyway, until they made the M5 discovered people want a Leica that looks like a Leica, no matter how good the camera is). Will a beautifully smooth film advance help you take better pictures? No, just as a wonderfully complex door hinge won't make you a better driver. But it does instill confidence in the machine and its manufacturer.
Ah, the old 'mine is bigger than yours' theory in action. SUVs, well, let's not go there.
Now in Century 21, wiser heads buy smaller cars, or go to EV. Blockheads stay with the Road Tanks, especially in the cities where they are as useful as a cart horse. Apology to cart horses, even if they do require feeding and care and they do pollute in their own way.
This poster is spot-on with his ideas. Quality can be found by thinking laterally and looking sideways at two or several items from the same brand and/or manufacturing run. In my case, Nikons, rather Nikkormats. I've owned 'mats since the first FTN came out, then ELs, then FT2s (I still have two of the latter). I owned an FT for a brief time but a friend wanted it badly as her only camera and I sold it at a mate's rate. AFAIK she still has it and still uses it, if she can afford to buy film in Australia.
Oddly, or interestingly in my case, a Nikon F with a Photomic finder I bought and used for a year in the '90s was a camera I basically disliked from day 1. It was noisy and I thought, tinny, but in retrospect what I most hated about it was that Photomic. Eventually it went bust and a friend kindly gave me a non-metered prism finder which improved the cameras usage for me. Unfortunately, not long afterwards it disappeared, likely stolen or maybe borrowed and never returned. (Insurance made it good and I moved on to Contax Gs, which is entirely another saga.)
So for me it was, 'mats yes, Nikon Fs no. With the Nikkormats, over the decades and after using so many of those, I found the manufacturing quality to be remarkably consistent. They were built like Sherman tanks. There was an old joke that they were made from cast iron and held together with ocean liner rivets.
Digital Nikons,well. I held out until the D90 came out, and bought one We still have it and it gets used a lot. Then D700s. Then D800s. Recently, a Z6. in terms of build quality they seem to have declined in small but significant ways from the D90 onwards. I've yet to properly test my still-new Z6, but it hope it will be the one for me to recapture the old Nikon DSLR magic.
So there's Quality and there's also quality. Same but different. Different but same. Equations can be reversible, after all.