I am a little late to the party here and I agree with both of you if that even makes sense. My 2 cents.
I have strangers and friends alike ask me for rod a reel recommendations quiet often. My first question to them is "what species are you TARGETING?" This help eliminate 50% of the rods automatically based on if they are fishing saltwater or freshwater. You can then get even more selective because you do not want to use a trout rod for carp or vise versa.... I think you get my point here on dialing in the species to the rod action and power which is what Jon is saying. My next question is " what is your price range or maximum spending?". Just because I love St. Croix and FX Custom does not mean that the persons budget will allow them to use the same. With this, comes experience by personally trying a bunch of different levels of rods. From that I can only SUGGEST what rods to use from my past experiences but it does help the buyer by having some sort of backbone when searching, like John mentioned. To add to that, if someone says that they "just want to go fishing", and I can identify its freshwater from any species from blue gills to bass to even carp, I would recommend a Med power Fast action rod as it can handle just about all of these species based on angler experience. If I know the person will beat the rod up, I tell them Ugly Stick, if they will take care of the rod, I will recommend others.
Now with all of that said, there is always still personal preference even once you dial all of that down but at that point it is up to the person with the $$ to pull the trigger. Like most things fishing, most of our "tools" are designed to catch the angler vs performance while actually fishing.