Weird hypothesis, but is what WeWork brings to the table that Regus doesn't is Silicon Valley brand recognition? Not that I'm in the market for office space, but I haven't heard about Regus until this comment.
AIUI, Regus won't talk to you if you're not willing to commit to a 12 or 24 month lease. If I had a stock position, it would be very short WeWork, but assuming you can make the month-to-month economics work, that's a pretty big benefit regardless of customer size.
I can assure you my regional office manager doesn't give a toss about "silicon valley brand recognition".
I think it's down to the customer. There's a post below about somebody being reassured "it's a We Work" office they'll be in.
When I've looked for a job, it's never entered by head to ask who manages the office (my assumption is that it's my employer and if I'm not happy, I'll take it up with my employer).
I can see if you've often worked in offices not run by your employer, you might have learnt to ask - but would think that's a small pool of people working frequently in shared spaces, having worked their frequently enough to have a preference.
Back to the OP - it's not a "hypothesis", this stuff's been going on for decades.
e.g. ~2000 I was working in Paris and visited our local guy in his local office on the prestigious "Champs Elysee" no less.
I went down the "Champs Elysee", then through a small door behind two shops, then walked back a couple of hundred meters, then through a warren of rooms, then in a room off a room, there was a desk... and that was our office. Hundreds of people all working at this prestigious address - we must have been silver-class as we had our own physical desk.
If you went right back to the entrance door, there was a receptionist you could specifically pay to 'represent you for the hour' and a set of very swish/generic meeting rooms you could pretend were yours to visitors.
Honestly as a programmer they have a name and reputation for providing nice offices that I can rely on. I recently agreed to take a job halfway around the world (interviewing via video chat), and when they asked if I had any questions about the office I was able to say "no, it's a WeWork and that's good enough for me". Surely that's got to be valuable to that tenant company.
