Bo1972, I also sell popular products at my retail spot and can understand your points. It's the best bait for uneducated consumer!
By analogy, my consumers like to buy Madonna, Michael Jackson, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd and so on...
Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Nat King Cole, Julie London, jazz of any kind will most-likely stay on shelves substantially longer and those are for educated consumers that know about music more than just popular stuff.
It's all natural. Well marketted product such as Nordost, AudioQuest will sell good weather it makes or it doesn't make sense.
Taking the fact that wires can only dictate 1% of overall system performance, the dumb ballpark figure to invest into wires should be very close to that ratio. For system priced $10,000 the total price for wires should be somewhere close to $100. My system is a-bit bellow $10k worth, but wires total worth is $185 including speaker wires(BTW unterminated Kimber 8TC purchased as left-over bulk). My wire philosophy is tied mostly with pro-grade. Ones used in studios will bring the sound with most precision and with least investment giving the largest performance per dollar IMHO.