Scott,
My point was that many of these types of accomodations (edge treatments for less than sharp/square edges) come directly out of the commodity factory cabinet world that has no choice other than to do anything and everything in its power to appease the demands of the buyers demands to feed profit margins and CEO and shareholder compensation. All you have to do is walk through any homecenter or kitchen shop to see that when there is an issue with cracks at the panel/sticking joint? Pre-finish the panels and the sticking prior to assembly and put a big rad at the sticking/panel joint and "celebrate" the uncleanable grease and grime magnet that has been created. Issues with cope and stick joints telegraphing through the finish? Solve that one with the same treatment. Prefinish the sticking, cut, cope, and assemble with dowels or any other means leaving a clearly visible, pretty much dry, joint there right out of the box. That way when the customer spends some time looking at all the cracks in the cope and stick, they cant complain because thats what was on the showroom floor.
Chasing that market (unless your able to compete in that market) is not wise in my opinion but I may be wrong.
The big box and factory cab outlets have persevered long enough to change the average residential customers mindset into thinking that is the best they have available, or they just have to accept it because... well,.. they knew they were buying "cheap" cabinets to begin with.
We have dealt with this directly numerous times. A local will come in and we will quote an apples for apples kitchen in comparison to their homecenter quote. We may even come in a few cents lower. Their response will be "well I can buy it from Lowes for that" even though our boxes will be built better, drawers better, hardware and slide better, and we STILL are competitive. Being the one who is actually making the cabinets you are judged under a slightly different light. Many of these individuals have opted to go the box route and are inevitably back in the shop 3-4 months later and they are still resolving credit and replacement issues with mis-ordered parts, damages, poor quality, and while they say they will never return. In a few months they will be ordering a vanity, some laundry cabs, and so on and going right back for more.
May have been a bad assumption on my part that the OP's consideration of rads on the face frames was to try and get a bit more down and dirty. As has already been stated here, when we did installs even on the most stubborn of boxes I never had a difficult time flushing a face frame to an adjacent cabinet.
Larry's response with regards to euro cabs is an interesting one. We have CNC and can run Euro boxes in our sleep and would love to becuase they are simple to make. But we are in a rural area and even with showing people the advantages with regards to full overlay ad space they will have nothing to do with it. First and foremost they will never get over the fact (in their minds) that particle board is junk and they will never have it in their home even if their experience was with some dollar general desk unit that fell apart the first time they tried to move it. I cant say I blame them. We build quite a bit with melamine and I dont have any in my own home other than in areas that see light use (linen/clothes storage). They have seen to many melamine shelves scratched beyond believe, banding issues, damp homes in rural areas and melamine is a no go, on and on. We dont sell retail but have had numerous locals in the shop that spend lots of time in doctors and dentists offices waiting well after their scheduled appointment and they comment regularly that they would never want the cabs they see in their doctors office in their homes.
This is all after informing them that that is not a realistic comparison of what a nice set of euro kitchen cabs can be like. They wont have it.
Thankfully there are still the few out there who are wanting work from a local, detail oriented, shop whether it be a 30 man shop or a 3 man shop. At least in my area those folks arent looking for rad's or bought-in doors and drawer boxes.