https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/2ni3dp/why_are_gibson_les_pauls_so_expensive/cme23es
TL;DR: Gibson tried charging less money for their guitars, and people bought less of them. So they raised their prices (without changing the guitars), and people bought more. It was famous in the business and finance-press for a while.
Gibson's pricing strategies have actually been used as examples in business classes, and were the subject of a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal, and other places.
In the late 1980s / early 90s, Gibson's then-ownership implemented a ton of new cost-efficiencies and managed to bring the retail price of brand-new Les Paul Standard down from something like $1,200 (1980s price), to something like $700-800, without compromising quality. As in, the metrics of quality and consistency were better, the reviews from guitar magazines, customers, and sponsored-players were equal or better-- there was no skepticism that they had pulled a Fender and cut corners: their cost-cutting was strictly by streamlining inventory, investing in better machining, cutting down on error-rates and waste with better management practices, etc.
Gibson's guitars were, at the time, seen as old-fashioned and over-priced compared to the fast necks, double-locking tremolos, flashy shapes and color-schemes, multi-tap pickup options, 24-fret shred machines from the height of the hair metal era.
The thing is, the more they cut prices, the lower their sales numbers were. They had a loyal following among older and more affluent hobbyists, but the "kids" were still buying Yamahas and so on, even when Gibson was close to the same price.
And so Gibson began a process of re-inventing their marketing as a boutique, "olde timey" specialty guitar-maker, and raised their prices to reflect lower sales-volume and a perception of exclusivity. Lo and behold, their sales-volume went up. So they raised prices again. And again. And the more they raised prices, the more guitars they sold, and the more market-share they took from similar-quality competitors.
Just so we are clear: these price-changes were
literally calling up their retailers, and telling them to take off the $700 price-tags, and replace them with $1,000 price-tags, then $1,200 price-tags, then $1,500 price-tags, and so on.
They were literally selling the exact same guitars faster, by raising their price.
...
In any case, Gibson guitars are expensive, because they sell more guitars that way.
