It's been our experience that all different products perform differently, and even can be different in various applications.
Primarily, the idea of vibration transfer would be aimed at taking the vibrations away from the equipment and down into a larger mass which is capable of dissipating the vibrational energy.
The idea of local damping would be aimed at trying to dissipate the vibrational energy right there at the equipment.
Basically, the difference in need would dictate the product used, because if the need is greater than the local damping product used can provide, then the overload of vibration will be reflected back into the components as the Zener Viscoelastic Model demonstrates.
In a highly vibration-laden environment such as an audio listening room, it is very likely that any small viscoelastic product would be overloaded very quickly, and thus return the vibrations into the components, causing smear.
To deal with large amounts of vibrational energy, a means to transfer the energy to something which has the capacity to dissipate those vibrations more effectively(large mass, house, earth) might be a better choice in many applications.
There are products which are designed to do this.
Some are more effective than others.