Many of these situations I have ran into over my career. Of course I also explain certain programs like the news are simply not recorded in surround sound. But most people need a demo to understand.

For surrounds I like to demo a number of material but one of the best I have found is Master in Commander before the cannons at the beginning of the movie. In fact I stop the demo right before the cannon start unless you want to demo bass.

There is nothing particularly exciting in the movie at this point. They are on the ship, the wind is blowing, bells are ringing, a lot of background noise and conversations. Nothing that calls attention to the surrounds like when something flies overhead or across the room. While they are listening to this scene I press the stereo button on the receiver or processor. The whole soundstage collapses to the front of the room. They now realize that the surrounds were immersing them in this environment and that they were actually hearing them but they weren't calling attention to themselves.

As far as preference versus reference I think it is time. I have a theory I call the Mom's spaghetti rule. Everybody's mom (grandma, etc.) makes the best spaghetti. Meaning everyone has their own reference. If you mostly only listen to music in the car than that is your reference. If you mostly use ear buds that is your reference. You know what music sounds like for your reference and that is set how you prefer. If your reference has very boomy, bloated bass when you hear accurate bass you think it is anemic. However, if a person listen to accurate music for a while and then goes back to their old reference they then realize that it was boomy and bloated.

Toole mentioned this in his book and the reason they decided to use trained listeners. They found that untrained listeners came to the same conclusion but took them longer to get to that conclusion. I don't think most people when demoing speakers in the showroom spend enough time. It is why accurate speakers often do not do sell as well in many showrooms. I KNOW some companies do research with the public with preferences with simulating the amount of time they would likely do a demo and how quickly they would switch between speakers. Not all that research is made public. I do give Kudos to Harman for making their research public.

In the end for any speaker company it is about sales and that is where a lot of research is directed.