For me I like to get the best that my money could buy. in the case of phones I love my galaxy nexus because it gave me the best android with the top of the market features (when I bought it) that non other phones had for a much better price than any other phone. now I'm going to upgrade to the new nexus, I wont buy a galaxy 4 nor an iPhone because they are much more expensive and wont give me the features I'm looking for and I wont buy cheap Chinese phones as they won't give those features to me..
now in clothing, I buy my jeans at 20-50 bucks and work great for me I don't see why I would spend +200 for the same thing.
VW/VV mods I got the zmax v3 as it gave me more features than the provari and had a much better price and appearance for me.
mech mods , same as jeans I can't justify spending 200 for something that I can get at 30 (I'm not into clones per se, I don't care about the logo nor "status" I don't know a single person that would see the difference between a nemesis a caravela or a stainless steel tube bought at a hardware store in my area..