Hi Justin,
Good question and frankly, I'm glad you posted on this subject. First,...my disclaimer. Each and every individual is ultimately the collective result of their own experiences in life so all I can do is offer mine. You'll likely read & hear many others, however I'd simply ask you to maintain context of the providers during your fact-finding "tour".
There are several manufacturers of shocks (accurately called dampers) for our cars and each maker offers what they feel people want regarding features and performance. Some are better than others for ride quality, handling, adjustability, durability, warranty, etc. Some are directed toward the competition/track day user, some for street & track, and and some are just meant to be a high-quality OEM replacement.
I select suspension components based on three
main criteria: type of use, performance, and longevity (there are others, too). The first two are pretty intuitive but the last one needs some clarification and explanations. No matter how good something might be, if its fragile or delicate, or lacks an effective warranty, its useless to me. Product support in particular is extremely important to me as I've had to deal first-hand with manufacturer warranty claims. Despite all the advertising noise, every manufacturer administers their warranties differently and many do not stock parts nor replacement shocks on the shelf for immediate resolution. For me, I cannot afford nor should a client be expected to wait 2-8 weeks to fix a product defect,....owner-damaged parts are a different situation altogether. Truth is, there ARE distinct quality differences between shock brands and some are really better than others. One soon realizes this after installing and selling many many sets over the years.
While I cannot go into details in a public forum, I can tell you that IMHO, two shock companies rise above all the rest for handling warranty claims and overall product support: Bilstein & Motion Control Suspension (race). The latter carries no warranty (naturally, given how these are used), but nobody in the trade is better about standing behind their products and keeping customers happy. Bilstein's warranty is a "living, breathing document" that they take seriously and they handle claims much better than other makers of street suspension.
For these and some other reasons, I do use, recommend, and sell Bilstein dampers for road and dual-purpose cars. Serious track and race cars gets MCS ones since I know my clientel will not have problems with either choice, respectively.
Didn't mean to go on for so long here, but your question was a good one and deserved a more thorough answer.
I may cross-post this to the 964 Forums since I think those folks wonder about the same things and may find something useful here.
Hope this helped,