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There are a lot of reasons. Originally Beta tapes could only hold an hours worth of content (a big deal for home video). A big one was that from the get go JVC licensed VHS to anyone and thus there was a lot of competition on price where Sony kept Beta to themselves for years (they were the only manufacturer of tapes for a decade). These were luxury items for many people when they first came out and price became a factor rather quickly. Basically Beta was better in all respects (video quality, sound quality, stability) except the ones that were most important to mass consumers (price, availability of movies).
Beta as a format though was more successful in professional environments and is still in use for certain things where as VHS is all but dead.
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