IMO, brand is close to meaningless in today's market. Lots of brands source their products from the same OEMs, many are even owned outright by the same larger parent. Giant is an OEM and makes or subcontracts frames for lots of companies. Trek makes almost no frames themselves. Cannondale and Specialized make nothing at all themselves. Cannondale is not even independant any more. You could argue that design and R&D is proprietary, but I think its importance in driving real world performance is almost entirely hype. I'm cynical about the current state of major branded road bikes when it comes to performance or initial quality. Service and support might be a different story.