When the prices are getting this close, there is absolutely cross shopping happening. I'm currently in a state of which frame to buy and I'm definitely split between building up a OEM and established brand like Specialized, Giant, Canyon, etc. and feel like I'm really being pushed to buy the latter.
I've owned 7 OEM/Generic frames over the past 10 years and 8 established brand frames of various materials and types. I very much disagree that OEMs offer the same sort of ride or performance that the most branded frames do, I think they can be very close, but there has always been something lacking in how the frame feels in general. When you combine that compromise of a slightly inferior ride, with a price that is getting closer and closer to brands, it really stops you and makes you say 'what's the point?'
As far as the group ride OEM absence...I think a lot of that has to do with the sort of personality that gets into these activities and there is going to be a strong social element of "keeping up with the joneses" and these activities are very much an 'upper class' sort of thing. I think there's going to be hordes of people that are more into just riding alone that aren't going to be pressured by the social aspect of showing up with some bike that cost $3000 to build instead of some swanky $7000 ride. There's also the aspect that OEMs generally require (at least in the US since they lack distribution) the rider to be adept at building their own bike up, which is not really normal for most cyclists.
I think the price increase is from a couple things:
Trying to establish a brand
Inflation
Establishing a brand now might be sort of a pre-emptive move as I think some hefty trade war actions and tariffs are in the future between China and the USA. If it's branded as 'expensive now' the cut to profit won't be as bad, or it wont look as bad compared to other OEMs which don't have branding, but are suddenly the same price as ones that do have a bit of branding.
