Not necessarily. A shortage is also due to constant re-arrangement and agreements terms changing with the company that actually make PCBs and supply components and build them.
I have seen multiple projects fall apart just for that, as it is a full time job just to re-negotiate conditions and terms with these companies. In the end you make a product and design it, but you don’t put it together or create the PCBs in your basement, when you get to a certain level,.and most of the cases when you try to scale to support your customer base, you see most of the problems.
Scalpers buy in bulk; and clearly no company gives a damn about the single purchase as there are more margins to be made on bulk sales. So if X comes to you and ask for 100 pieces, you give them 100 pieces and push back the lonely guy that bought just one. Seen that plenty of times sadly, so you end up with scalpers getting most of the items, that generates a shortage that is basically caused by the seller itself at that point, that does not put a limit on purchases or check that what he/she sell is actually not going to scalpers (why do they care? A sale is a sale, and if there is shortage of the product, more people order and wait 6-12 months for it, if they don’t want to pay scalpers).
It is a vicious cycle and customers have no real say in this, except by not buying from scalpers or wait months for a product. That would break the cycle and force people to address the issue, if they care about customers and not just about sales. Some do, some don’t.
Also would be not convenient to buy from RPI in bulk if you are based in CH; as these are made right there so you pay less from a local distributor compared to buy in dollars in US or pounds in UK and get a shipment to CH to then ship those all over the world… Just the import taxes would increase considerably the price of the Pi modules; which is what affects the availability (it is not like CWP cannot find modules, it is that they don’t want to pay them as much as you pay them as customer as that would be a loss for them).