Back in the late 90s/early 00s Alienware gaming rigs were pretty much the ultimate in computer gaming. I never did much computer gaming so I don’t know if they were worth it, but the name was synonymous with gaming computer. I think it went downhill after they got bought out by one of the big computer makers.
I know it’s already been mentioned but…
THE…FUCKING…KITCHENAID…MIXER!
Oh yes, my wife had to have the 5 quart model with the turning head that can grind up a corpse after a mafia hit. Why? Because every other woman we knew had one. It is now a $250 paperweight that takes up valuable counter space. They should sell that thing with a motion sensor that laughs at men when they walk into the kitchen to mock them for giving in to the peer pressure. And before the ten professional bakers on this board call me an asshole because they use their Kitchenaid every day, I can assure you the average person who owns one doesn’t.
I guess I should thank God I dodged a second bullet with the name ‘Dyson vacuum’ on it that almost hit me using the same logic.
Well, I certainly won’t call you an asshole - if your wife was gagging for a mixer because her friends had it that perfectly fits the OP.
With that aside, I’m not a professional baker at all and I do actually use my KitchenAid at least once a week, usually more often. This is because I do a lot of baking and cooking by scratch for my family and I find the KitchenAid really is a superior product. My mom has a similar style Hamilton Beach mixer and it doesn’t even come close.
However, if your wife was never particularly interested in baking and talked you into buying the thing because her friends had it and ‘If I have it I’ll bake way more!’ well, yah. Sucks to be you. 
Yes. Expensive makeup. I don’t know how department stores sell those trays of miracle potions and overpriced lipsticks to stay in business, but they apparently have a never ending supply of fervent customers. Apparently an $8 Cover Girl mascara is akin to something like Preparation H or Q-tips, but “splurge cuz you are so worth it” $24 Dior mascara is in an entirely different category. The Sephora shop should get some kind of award for extracting the most amount of money from the customer’s wallet, and it’s all peer pressure. IMO.
As for vinyl and turntables - I have tons of records and a turntable, because we never throw anything out! Wanna hear the extended version of Funkytown? (I know, I know, that’s not what the poster back there meant, I’m just being funny, sort of.)
Btw these falls under the “kitchen appliances” I mentioned above:
Bread machine - I think we used it all of two times with mediocre results; had a friend who made a lots of bread with her machine for a while and used to give me some now and then though.
Ice cream machine - A Cuisinart. I bought it some 5 years ago after seeing a bunch of people with one; I have not used it so far. The brilliant plan was to make creamy peach ice cream that I can’t seem to find anywhere. Maybe tomorrow is the day. I hope it’s not defective. :rolleyes:
Professional manicures.
People have reached adulthood in one piece, but mysteriously lack the power to paint their own nails?
Farmville, Mafia Wars, pretty much all of the social games. They’re all great big multi-level marketing schemes dressed up as games.
There are some items of makeup (like Mascara) where price is not an indicator of anything. However…
Anything with a vibrant hue (eyeshadow, blush, etc.) will last a lot longer if you go up a couple of levels in price. There are less fillers and more colour in the product (this goes for companies such as Mac). I have actually saved a fortune on makeup once I started buying more expensive stuff (which only happened because I got a Sephora gift card one Christmas).
YMMV, I wear makeup everyday. If you are an occasional user, you probably need to throw out your makeup before it is used up and this advice is moot.
I’ll bite on the Kitchen Appliance thought…
Kitchen Aid and Cuisinart each make a stand mixer and a food processor, but you just don’t buy any stand mixer other then a Kitchen Aid, and you just don’t buy any food processor other then a Cuisinart. Also, you can buy a blender from either of them, but You shouldn’t; you should buy a Vita-Prep. It doesn’t really matter who makes the better product, I will think less of you if you bought the wrong brand. God help you if you bought a Hamilton Beach or Black and Decker anything.
Pinkberry. I bet there are some people who go there because they like it more than competing yogurt shops, but I suspect more go there because Britney spears and assorted stars were photographed there.
I really don’t think name-brand sunglasses are worth hundreds of dollars due to just the name. Same for purses.
Re: the tv…I find bigger televisions to be a LOT more useful than a tiny one. 82" sounds ridiculously oversized, but hey. I think we have a 32" and it’s plenty good. I could imagine getting maybe a 50 or so, but we’d need a huge living room with lots of space before a screen 82" would seem nice instead of just way too much.
FWIW, I didn’t fall into that category. I started when I was 33, because I tried someone’s at a party that I thought smelled good. Still can’t/won’t smoke ANY regular cigarette, but there’s one particular brand+flavor that I’ve smoked ever since. Wont’ smoke anything else; everything else tastes like shit. 
I’m gonna throw in ‘Beer’ into the category of peer pressure driven sales/use. Who the hell likes beer? How many times have you heard people say ‘You have to learn to like it’. The hell I do! That’s why we invented vodka. Fuck beer. Yes, I know some people actually like it first sip, but the percentage of folks who will drink that because that’s all there is <at a kegger, underage sneaking from the fridge, whatever> seems high to me.
I’m honestly not sure about this one, so I’m just putting it out there, THX, or at least the THX badge.
I know for some products that have two versions, one touting THX the other one not, it’s strongly suspected that they are both identical, but the THX version is only different in that it has the THX logo and is licensed by THX, at least that’s the case with the TiVo premiere. I actually got the THX version because it had a bigger hard drive, but if that was the only difference, based on what I’ve read, I wouldn’t have paid extra for it.
There was something else that I can’t think of at the moment that stopped using the THX logo (I think it may have been either Mirantz or Onkyo receivers). Someone on a forum I frequent bumped into one of the people that work for the company at the CES show and asked them about that. Their answer was they didn’t feel like paying for the license anymore. I took from that that the hardware/firmware was still the same. But when people rattle off specs about their home theater gear, do they really want to have to skip being able to say “THX certified”?
If we look at the OP’s original question,
…and interpret “product” a little loosely, I’d like to nominate religion and sports affiliations.
In terms of religion, if you are in the USA, there is peer pressure to join and contribute monetarily to (let’s say) a Christian denomination and perhaps peer pressure against joining and contribute monetarily to Islam or Budhism. That leads to greater revenue for the Christian “product”.
If you’re in Chicago, you’ll find there is more peer pressure to buy and display Chicago Bears or Chicago Cubs cups, pennants, etc. than to buy Green Bay Packers merchandise.
I’d also second that there is clout in sporting a Nalgene or Camelback water bottle in the camping or environmental communities, and there is some subtle peer pressure to use those products, when another water bottle would do as good of a job.
I also believe a Toyota Prius falls in this category. There are cars that have a lower carbon footprint, but for those that like to associate themselves with “eco” products, their is a greater “peer” reward for driving a Prius.
Ferraris, Porsches, Rolls Royces etc. if a car is just a means of transport to you then you don’t need to buy these models.
Also expensive perfumes.
Bud. This innocuous-tasting lawnmower lubricant has somehow become a marker for patriotic working-class masculinity.
Fitted kitchens, I know a few folk who’ve had these installed because all their friends have them, but have you ever thought about them in terms of catering and food hygiene?
They are hopeless, the base units sit on a plinth, beneath which you cannot get to clean, and the back panel is generally a few inches away from the back wall.
This means, if you get pests, they have somewhere warms and inacessible to live.
Now look at a proper catering kitchen, usually everything, including sinks can be wheeled away from walls, it can all be disconnected, incuding water and drains.
Oh yeah, and on a safety related front, if you have gas, and you get a small pinhole leak, it will gather behind those nice units, you may not even smell a thing, until it blows up.
In the defense of fancy washer and dryers, there is a big difference between the washer/dryer I had in college (that we bought second-hand and was just a random set) and the nice fancy set I bought after college. We bought Whirlpool Cabrios, and to be honest, they work really well. I got them at cost because I worked for the store, but while I was there I sold a lot of Whirlpool products. Either the cheap ones broke first and we repaired them, or the fancy ones broke because the users were idiots (slight exaggeration, but really, we sold to a lot of idiots.) I don’t think I would say that having the top of the line is important, but they really do save water and electricity (so are cheaper to operate) and they do a better job than the “found on craigslist” dryer we had…of course, we weren’t peer pressured into it at all. I sold them at the time, I knew what I was buying…
Brendon Small
On the Kitchenaid front, I have both a stand mixer and a food processor based on Cooks Illustrated’s recommendation. They’re both awesome. On the case of the stand mixer, it was my first, so I have nothing to compare it against. In the case of the food processor, I’ve had several, crappy food processors in my life, and I ended up not using them because they were crappy, except I didn’t know they were relatively crappy in addition to just being crappy. The Kitchen Aid I willingly use all of the time because it really is useful. (Now to see if they work just as well at 50 Hz in a few weeks…)