The rise of “enshittification” in customer experience – and why it’s ineffective

Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe the slow degradation of digital platforms as businesses optimise for profit over user experience. What begins as something useful, even loved, is gradually reshaped as more value is extracted from the people using it. The experience declines, often subtly at first, but then unmistakably.

This is becoming increasingly relevant to how brands approach innovation strategy, product design and customer experience today. While the term emerged in tech, the pattern is no longer contained there – showing up across different categories, markets, and everyday moments. Innovation is still happening, but something about it feels off.  

Enshittification reduces user and customer value while holding or increasing the price.  Supermarket goods subtly shrink with each visit. Streaming services creep upward in cost while layering in ads or restrictions. Free platforms become increasingly saturated with advertising – more persistent, more intrusive, and harder to escape. Planned obsolescence quietly shortens product lifespan, with items designed to be replaced rather than last.  

This is true even in categories traditionally defined by innovation and progress. In electric vehicles, performance features such as increased power are now being locked behind ongoing subscription payments, reframing what ownership means. In some models, drivers can only unlock the full capability of the car by paying a recurring fee.  

This model is also showing up in wearables. Products like the Whoop fitness tracker offer the hardware for free but require a minimum annual subscription of around $300 to function. And it’s not something isolated to existing products and services, new products are being enshittified from the outset.  Without that ongoing payment, the device becomes a useless arm strap, so the innovation sits in the business model, not in the experience.

Products and services are increasingly designed with future monetisation as the sole focus, without proper consideration of customer value. The result is an idea that may appear to work for the business model but fail to work for people in the real world.

When innovation stops serving the customers it’s also playing out in how ownership is evolving in the subscription economy, with people trading certainty and control for flexible access, often without fully realising what they’re giving up. Explore The Research Agency’s (TRA) Ownership perspective here.

By definition, innovation is about bringing new or improved ideas into the world. These examples qualify because they’re new. They might be commercially effective (for now), and in many cases, cleverly designed. But they don’t improve the lives of people they’re intended to for.  

Here, innovation stops being about the end customer and starts being about value extraction. In doing so, it often ignores the context in which the product or service exists – the culture people are navigating, the financial pressure they are under, and their desires for the future. Most importantly, it overlooks a simple truth: in most categories, customers have a choice. Unless you’re one of the few companies with near-total market control, making things worse for the people you’re trying to retain will eventually catch up with you.

What customers actually want from innovation

This is not about resisting the new. People are not pushing back against innovation itself; they’re pushing back against what it has become.

In TRA’s Progress study (AU/NZ), 95% of people say it is important that companies continue to innovate and improve the services they provide to help them make progress. People want things to get better.

Better means more intuitive, more rewarding, more valuable, and more aligned with real life.

It does not mean paying more to access what used to be included, nor does it mean accepting a slower, harder, more conditional experience. Even in everyday categories, the same pattern shows up – if your chocolate bar shrinks just that little bit more each quarter, there comes a point where the customer simply reaches for the one next to it.

When innovation moves in the opposite direction, people feel it. They might not articulate it at first, but they recognise the shift. Something has changed, and not in their favour.  

How enshittification erodes brand trust

From inside a business, these decisions can feel inconspicuous. Just a small change to benefit the business right now.  

But humans are hardwired to notice, and resist, change. Especially when it feels like a threat. People feel the accumulation of it over time. Extra costs stack up, and what they get in return no longer feels worth it.

Trust might not collapse overnight, but in the midst of these moves towards enshittified innovation, it thins and becomes conditional. This is costly. Trust takes time to build, but it can be weakened quickly, and once it becomes conditional, every interaction has to work harder to earn its place. The Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 shows how trust in businesses continues to falter under economic and societal pressure.

What looks like optimisation internally can land as extraction externally, and this is risky.

How businesses lose sight of customer needs

Most businesses do not set out to create worse experiences. The people behind these decisions are not disconnected from the world outside – they’re customers too.

But in the face of economic pressure, businesses can default to chasing the immediate problem or ambition in front of them. The focus narrows, and in doing so, the factors that contribute to long-term success begin to fall away.

What effective innovation strategy requires

This is not an argument against ambition, business problems, or commercial goals. These should always sit at the core of idea generation. But they cannot be the only thing shaping it.

If you do not truly consider people and the world in which they exist, you will create something worse for them, and worse for the business in the long run.

Strong innovation strategy holds both realities at once. It begins with the business challenge, but it expands outward to consider context, culture and behaviour. It asks how an idea will live over time, not just how it will launch.

It also asks harder questions, What does this feel like after repeated use?  What does it signal about the brand? Where does it sit relative to alternatives? What trade-offs are being introduced, and who is carrying them?

How to build better innovation that creates customer value

Avoiding enshittification of new or improved ideas requires more than good intent; it requires an ongoing effort to bring the outside in. A structured exploration for idea formation and subsequent testing to ensure alignment with people in the real world.  

TRA’s Innovation Fundamentals framework for innovation strategy is designed to bring business ambition and human reality into the same conversation. It creates the kind of tension that stops innovation from drifting too far toward extraction and pulls it back toward mutual value.

Where to from here: rebuilding customer value

If the products and services people rely on are becoming harder to justify, easier to resent, or less enjoyable to use, it is worth stepping back, asking why, and considering how to rebuild value in a way that works for both the business and the people it serves.

People are not asking for less, they are asking for better – the brands that understand the difference will be the ones that last.

At The Research Agency, we bring business ambition and human reality into the same conversation – using behavioural science and cultural insight to shape innovation that creates real value.

If you’re rethinking how your innovation shows up for people, we’d love to chat.