I think folk need to remember that established brands in any modern, complex consumer economy only loosely price goods based on production costs plus $
n% margin. A far larger consideration is perceived brand value, perceived value of competition, and what the market will bear for a given item, etc. (Just take a look at Apple or maybe Rolex as a case study).
Where this strategy starts to fall apart is when other entrants into the market take a much simpler approach and DO price goods up by production costs plus $
n% margin. This is the approach taken by a plethora of Chinese IEM manufacturers (where production costs are very low anyway) and it means that they are able to undercut products from businesses like Shure and make them look very expensive. They also do not have the R&D costs in the main, as they are not really innovating, just replicating what has gone before, albeit perhaps with a slightly different tunings.
I’m not excusing Shure’s or any of the other major players’ pricing strategies (I had a major ‘ouch’ to overcome when I bought my gen 2’s), but it is worth taking a step back and remembering how all this works.
FWIW, the clincher in over coming the cost of the Gen 2’s for me was the fact that I had used SE535 for something like 15 years before hand and felt that the robustness, build quality and hence ‘cost per use’ justified the price. Very annoying for me then that my one of my Gen 2’s split open within a year
. I doubt I will ever spend as much on an IEM again.