I think more of brand confidence than snob appeal. Even if buying entry level, one hopes that a brand that makes lauded high end speakers provides the best quality components top to bottom of their offerings. This is no always the case.
Yes, room, and tastes, and system integration, but if you're spending $100k on speakers and can't find what you like, I think someone suggested Bose? More seriously stated, we have unprecedented amazing speaker choices available to us now.
I think it's more difficult at the low to midfi range, and for me, fortune favors the brave. Buy used and even old. For $1200 my legendary highly engineered KEF 107's are extremely tough to beat with great full range capabilities. My crossovers may have some rust on them, but they're weight would crush any current $1200 speaker crossover. KEF is a brand to be confident in and new products such as LS50 appear to provide good value.
Some manufacturers take advantage of their brand, and while they provide nice sounding speakers, they use the cheapest parts and charge the highest price possible on entry level products.
It can be scarier to choose a smaller company, an internet direct company, especially one that appears to have few or even one employee, but if you dont want to put all your money into overhead, I think that is the way to go. Is it nice to think that there is a huge team developing the best speaker? Maybe. Even large companies will tout the great single engineer that developed their speaker.
I think it's pretty well established that one or two people can design and build a fantastic speaker. The trick is finding the person designing that likes the sound signature you like. For me that is currently the very first home audio design by Daedalus. The best I have heard in my house ever. Caveat, I would not pay the $10-15k these would cost new though I think they're worth it versus other $10k original retail speakers I have heard. If I had that much money, I would wait for a better used set of Daedalus to go up for sale.
I used to steer clear of the smaller companies with supposed great speakers. If they're so great, why isn't everyone buying them? The better of these companies are usually in high demand for what they can produce and actually back-ordered. Salk Sound is an example of producing very high quality speakers and cabinets and always back ordered, until now going out of business with no one to take over. I suppose there's concern of long term support, but I've yet to need support from any speaker manufacturer and many like Salk don't make their own drivers.
Another one who, like Salk, uses same drivers as manufacturers such as Joseph Audio, is Tyler Acoustics. I've yet to get a pair, but you can sometimes find some used at price of high end drivers, let alone crossovers and cabinets. You'll never find that value with big name brands, and Tyler speakers are highly regarded.
Even better than DIY, buy a used set of DIY for less than the cost of the parts after the builder moves on to the next project. Make sure you pay low since resale of DIY is the lowest of the low. I think this is a good example where more value is put on brand confidence than sound quality, but may have nothing to do with snobbery of brand or lack thereof if not a kit. Again the idea, if it's so great, why doesn't everyone DIY? Also, lack of reviews, etc.