I'm also a coffee nut, i roast the green beans myself, but am not connected to the industry. I suspect that the quality of the coffee goes down as the convenience goes up. This is probably because the manufacturers figure, well, if the customer is going to the trouble of grinding and brewing their own pot, then they probably care about the taste a little, but if they want to just throw a bag into a cup, then they care more about convenience and can probably deal with worse flavor. Also, if you pre-grind the coffee it will lose flavor much more quickly than whole bean regardless of original quality.

One thing which seems to be always true in the US is that cheaper and adequate always beats out higher quality but more expensive, at least for the general populace. You can substitute faster for cheaper and the result is the same.