The manufacturing world will argue differently. They will say that due to mass production they were able to make the product cheaper. Hence the price discrepancy between the new unit and spare parts.
On the face of it they may have a point but competition from the east isn't the full story. They appear to have increased the price of spare parts to make most things uneconomical to repair.
Bosch did the same thing. I could employ another person in the workshop to strip 200 x 9" angle grinders for spare parts every month. In South Africa we would sell 200 replacement armatures a month. We sold 50 field coils, 10 motor housings, 10 handles, 20 on/off switches and 35 sets of bevel gears. I would sell the bevel gears as an assembly with spindle, bearings and seal for the same price as the 2 bevel gears as a part number, crush 150 field coils, crush 190 motor housings, crush 190 handles, 180 switches and 165 gear sets and still make more profit than buying the exact number of parts as spares from Germany and pay the staff member to do the job. So Bosch was making a fortune on selling parts.
When I came to the UK 25 years ago I had a brief spell at Black & Decker. They were just finishing off closing the Spennymoor assembly line in Co Durham and moving it, machinery and all, to a country that was originally behind the iron curtain where labour was cheaper.
It just didn't make sense to me because a 13mm 2 speed hammer drill was costing them £6.97 to manufacture in Spennymoor and this included packaging, the chuck and a 3 pin plug. They were selling the same drilling machine for over £80 with refurbished drills at £80. (Refurbished could mean a nearly new drill returned for credit after the buyer had drilled a couple of holes he wanted it for or a brand new machine removed from its packaging and sold in a plastic bag.) I couldn't believe that moving a whole assembly line to another country with reduced labour costs could make much of a dent in £6.97. But there you have it.
