In certain industries it is a concern as to how involved manufacturers become involved in the continuing education process.  Lunch & learn educational programs will stretch more toward each vendor's product as it relates to education.  What should be an unbiased presentation on up-and-coming technologies instead becomes a sales commercial for said products.  However, without the vendors it becomes nigh impossible to have accessible, convienient sessions that would satisfy continuing education requirements.  The two are married, perhaps forever, and through this relationship professionals are fed much of what the industry wants us to know.  This familiarity breeds comfort with the products, and vendors offer programs that now satisfy mandatory state requirements force professionals to be interdependant upon the vendors.  It is implied they return such aid in kind, as implied by representatives, by specifying their products. 

By definition this is a form of bribery.