As a certifiable Olde Phogey who can remember when the most expensive plastic kits on the market were priced at $12.00, I've long since given up passing judgment on what constitutes a "reasonable" price for a kit. The market is completely different now than it was in the Goode Olde Dayes, when masters for molds had to be made by hand, instruction sheets had to be drawn with pen and ink, and the vast majority of purchasers were kids.
I don't have any special insights into the finances of kit manufacturers, but I can easily understand that their pricing decisions are, by definition, complicated. The manufacturer has to get his investment back in a reasonable amount of time, shipping expenses have to be covered, and everybody involved in the process (from the people who make the masters and do the research through the people who run the molding machines to the wholesale distributers to the shipping firms to the hobby shop where you buy the thing) has to make money. How much money constitutes a "reasonable" profit? That's not for me to say.
Nowadays, when a super-high-quality kit hits the market I ask myself two questions: Do I want it and can I afford it. Since the answer to the latter question usually is "no," the former one doesn't matter much. I just can't justify spending a hundred dollars on a 1/350 battleship - even if I think it's "worth it" in terms of what's in the box.
I'm sure the Dragon Scharnhorst is a fine kit. In all honesty, if I were seriously thinking about spending that kind of money on a warship kit, that might well be my first choice. And if there was a realistic possibility that I'd immediately take it out to the workshop and spend six or eight months working on it, I just might buy it. But the truth of the matter is that, after spending some happy hours ogling at the quality of the parts, I'd probably put it in my already ridiculously large stash - and maybe build it a few years from now, or maybe not. (I'm embarrassed to admit that I operate like that - but the editorial in this month's FSM suggests that I'm far from alone in that respect.)
Fortunately my eyesight is still good enough that I can get a lot of satisfaction from 1/700 kits - and there are enough modestly priced ones around to keep me busy for the rest of my life (even without dipping into the world of the resin manufacturers). My observation has been that both Dragon and Trumpeter offer state-of-the-art 1/700 kits at prices that won't destroy my bankbook. The Trumpeter 1/700 North Carolina costs $25.00 (at Free Time Hobbies, as of a few minutes ago). The superb White Ensign detail set for it costs $18.37 (from the same source). Total: $43.37. Is that a lot for a model that's about a foot long? Yep. But it'll keep me busy for several weeks - and produce a model that will fit in our existing curio cabinet.
The Trumpeter 1/350 North Carolina (which is generally agreed to be less accurate than the smaller one) costs $107.95, plus $54.57 for the appropriate detail set. Total: $162.52. Mathematically, that's not an unreasonable difference. (Producing, distributing, and stocking a 1/350 product probably does cost at least four times as much as producing, distributing, and stocking its 1/700 equivalent.) But the bottom line, from my standpoint, is that the Tilley budget can handle $54.57 and can't handle $162.52 (ignoring the matter of where the finished 1/350 model would live). I suspect I'm not the only modeler for whom that decision is a no-brainer.
Now then, Dragon and/or Trumpter: that Tamiya 1/700 Scharnhorst represented the state of the art when it first appeared, back in the late seventies. But it's looking kind of long in the tooth these days....