The tooling is a couple decades old now it's well payed for.
I don't mind proportionate price increases.... The 880 $ seems more than proportionate.
The price is based on how many units they need to produce and sell over the long term to make a profit. Their original price was built into the profit they wanted to produce even long after the tooling was paid for. They're not running a charity and producing saws for free once their tooling is paid for.
A higher volume saw is going to decrease the cost of manufacture and the units to produce and sell changes the price point relative to the profit margin.
The answer is pretty simple though...can you get an equivalent saw for cheaper? If Yes then by buying Stihl you're paying for the name, brand loyalty, etc. etc. If the cheaper saw isn't equivalent in all aspects of machine life expectancy and quality, then that's where the extra money goes when buying the Stihl. Are people still buying a ms880 at their current price point and is Stihl happy with their profit margin? Then, they're not going to say hey, lets sell the saw cheaper and lose more money. It wont be until the units sold : profit margins decrease where they re-evaluate the price. And if another company is selling an all things equal equivalent saw for cheaper, then perhaps they're undercutting the market and aren't making the profit margin that Stihl is on the same saw. At that point Stihl does less work and makes more money. Eventually it should catch up to them and they'll have to reduce price, or the other saw will be able to demand Stihl pricing...over inflated or not. Or they hold enough market share that their current pricing works for them.
I'd imagine a lot of the ms880 sales are going on behind the scenes to contractors, etc "I'll take 5 of those" kind of sales rather than walk in and buy 1 off the shelf kind of sale. The ms880 is just on the shelf for curb appeal.
At the end of the day it doesn't really matter that the 462 is half the price yet is more than half the saw. That saw price is priced separately based on the amount of units they'll produce and sell. The 880 has it's own pricing function for units produced and sold.
Some Stihl bean counter is in the back office somewhere crunching numbers all day figuring where they can set price points on units produced : sold in order to maximize profit. None of which has anything to do with what it's actually worth, but what are people willing to pay and what is our bottom line.
