Some great points in this thread.
In the end all of the main copier products do the same thing...they put toner on the paper, fuse it and offer a collection of ancillary tools which in many cases are more important (like scanning) than the copy function anymore.
Someone said earlier it was the whole package that the client wants to buy...they get impacted from everyone in your dealership, admin, billing, shipping, support, sales and yeh your suppliers too. We are a multiple branded op with Kyocera and Samsung as our largest lines now and Ricoh as a backup...why? because Ricoh chose to compete directly with us on the street...they went from 90% of our sales to aboout 20%....the competition with our supplier was not good for us and in the end not good for our clients. None of the suppliers are perfect and everyone of the brands has its challenges. In the end our job is to meet the needs of our clients profitably so we are around to serve them long term...and the clients who value that are the ones we look for.
Clients will change brands if you give them the reasons to do so...so they will also change to brands from your competitors if you give them the reason to do so...bad service, poor billing practices, unfriendly attitudes, etc.
Do the reverse and you will at least have a leg up when renewal time comes around.