A customer opens the AV proposal and sees a 75" display at $4,200 and remembers walking past the same size at a big box store for $398. From across the room the two look identical. It's hard for his reaction not to be that we are marking up the display and taking advantage or outright cheating them.
Same size is where the similarity ends. A consumer display is designed for residential use. A commercial panel is built to a much higher standard. They are often rated for 24/7 operation, with thermal management, control interfaces, and support built around the rigors of the commercial environment. Consumer warranties also commonly exclude commercial use. That means the coverage can lapse the day the display goes up in a commercial space.
A large project we finished a few years back went all consumer displays through the breakrooms, lobbies, and other public spaces. It was a move made to hold down cost in what seemed like the less critical spaces. Unfortunately, most of the displays failed the first year. They were never built for the hours that they saw, nor for the static images. The additional cost of integration to the customer was real too. Without real control ports they took more labor to install and integrate than commercial panels would have. The savings on the box came back as replacements and service calls.
Displays are the obvious case. The same trap happens with soundbars, HDMI extenders, USB devices, network switches, amplifiers, and plenty of other equipment.
The flip side is that sometimes those low-cost solutions are the right one. My own trade doesn't like to say that out loud, but sometimes cheaper is the better buy. A screen in an office that needs Smart TV functions and only runs a few hours a day should be a consumer display. It doesn't need 24/7 or the warranty that comes with it. Specifying commercial into that room is over-spending, the same error as putting consumer gear in a lobby. Telling those use cases apart is tricky work and it's not the same thing as always buying up.
Total cost is the panel plus the failures plus the labor to install and support it, measured across the years. Once that number is on the table, the $398 display and the $4,200 display change places. The cheaper box is only cheaper if you never counted the second one and the third one or more that you had to buy.
Complex systems. Seamless experiences.