Would you describe yourself as a "rational" buyer, do you always search for the best product that matches your current needs or do you show long term loyalty to specific brands? Of course these are not mutually exlusive, one can be loyal to a brand that happens to be the best in its category.

If affirmative, what are your favorite brands and what's your longest lasting brand loyalty?

In my case, it's Sony for television (all my 4 tv's in 15 years) and digital cameras (4 cameras in 6 years, compact and mirrorless). I don't use Sony for gaming though, I'm a pc gamer.

As for gaming, I've had nvidia video cards in all my computers, from fx5600 to gtx670.

I wouldn't claim to always be a rational buyer. Too many things I've bought on impulse over the years that weren't a good idea. I have very little brand loyalty though apart from a fondness for rpgs made by Chaosium.

Bethesda, Reebok, Philips.
Been going to the same dentist for over 10 years if that counts

I'm loyal to Bethesda. That's about it.

Anything and everything Game of Thrones and Rockstar.

I have brand loyalty to certain food because I like the specific flavours or quality, but other than that I prefer to shop smart and not just for some irrelevant loyalty.

Some brands i know are quality work, so i get them even if they are a bit more expensive. Not that they are forever type of deals, i always used to buy Logitech mice and keyboards, but now i prefer Razer's.

A poor man can't afford to buy cheap stuff

Absolutely zero brand loyalty. If it's cheap and looks to be at least roughly equal to name brand, I'll buy the cheaper product 90% of the time. ONly exceptions are Tuna, Spaghettios, Chicken Noodle Soup and a few other types of food that just don't seem to work very well as an off-brand product.

Up through this year I was steadfastly loyal to the tax prep software "TurboTax". But this year's version of Deluxe is a letdown. Certain functionality folk have relied on for years was removed for reasons that little sense to me beyond corporate greed. State tax e-filing is messed up to the point it had to be temporarily (?) disabled. Beyond that, printing out state return forms for mailing was not as intuitive as it was in the past, and I needed to physically alert the amount TurrboTax entered for Social Security on my state return. (This last didn't much matter beyond record keeping as I live in a state that does not tax Social Security.) Not saying I'll jump ship to a competitor next year, but you can bet I'll keep a close eye on the situation and insure that this year's slip ups are or aren't resolved to my satisfaction before taking the plunge.

For the most part I'm one who researches all planned purchases in advance and buy based a number of criteria that matter to me. There are certainly a number of brands I've come to rely on, but if research points to another brand's product that's what I'll buy. Case in point, motherboards. I've used ASUS boards when assembling my previous four computers. Yet if I were planning to assemble a computer today...I'm not...both my top choice is a Gigabyte board. Or it was when last I researched about at month ago. Likewise with PSUs. I know and trust Corsair, but will buy something else if research shows it better meets my needs.