People would be willing to pay more if there wasn’t as much competition. People obviously want to pay less, and companies obviously want to charge more, so the real variable here is how competitive the market is. And the more competitive the market, the closer to production costs companies are able to pay.

The variable here isn’t how much people are willing to pay, that’s elastic and depends on competition. The real variable is competitiveness in the market, since that is what drives prices closer to production costs.