Originally Posted by Pat
Why are the top quality parts so expensive?
Easy. People will pay that much money for them!
In our society, people equate performance with the quality of the bike they are riding. They have this notion that if they get a more expensive bike, their performance will improve. Thing is that about 95%+ of your performance is based on your skill, strength, aerobic power, and conditioning. But bike manufacturers can't sell those things.
But they can sit down and say "Hey, people will pay $200 for a rear cluster if we can make one that sounds sexy enough". So they go out and design a rear cluster that is made out of aerodynamic special alloy gold plated unobtanium and people buy it because it weighs 40 grams less then a $30 rear cluster made out of stainless steel.
Now for pro riders to buy the fanciest stuff makes sense. I mean how much CAN you spend on a bike? It is less then $10,000. And given the expenses of fielding a racing team and training year round, $10,000 is cheap thrills especially if getting the latest and greatest will give you a small performance improvement. But for the rest of us, it really does not matter if we do our 30 miles at 20 mph or 20.05 mph.
i think the first 2 lines are correct, but you're missing something in the last 3. obviously prices are set where supply equals demand. so ok.
in the last 3 paragraphs, though, i don't think you're wrong so much as something else needs to be pointed out. i think people definitely expect their performance to increase when they buy performance increasing parts. but that's only a bit of it. they also expect their enjoyment to increase. more comfort in the saddle. less stress on the knees. also, more miles traveled in the same time allocation. previously unscalable hill's now scalable. descents at a rate greater than ever before even considered. that kind of thing is a big part of it as well, in my opinion.
dan