This only happens when the users are the product or its a marketplace. Most business models dont suffer from shittification. But VCs love investing in the ones that do.
I would say the opposite. Consumers frequently reward the business models that do whatever it takes to lower prices in the short term, often sacrificing the long term.
It is a constant struggle to convince people that your higher quality product/service is worth the extra cost, and obviously, many times it is not.
But the formula for operating a successful, long term business is not as simple as “output the best quality product or service you can, and you will be rewarded”. It is more like “output the best quality product or service you can relative to prices of competing sellers, and at prices your clientele can afford”.
Which may or may not include sellers that have access to much cheaper money (VC, bigger companies with other revenue streams, etc), or sellers operating in different jurisdictions with lower costs.
It’s not that consumers don’t reward quality. It’s that more consumers reward lower prices, and once outside money is involved you have to chase growth instead of steady profits.
Family owned businesses are often able to maintain very high quality. They’ll just never make enough to satisfy people looking for huge returns, which is nearly anyone who doesn’t have some deeper connection to the company.
Sure, but in those industries the users leave, the company suffers and the executives get fired. VC are attracted to moaty business models where users cant leave.
In Canada the once beloved brick and mortar retailer Mountain Equipment Coop shittified itself straight to (pandemic) bankruptcy hard and fast not long after the Harvard MBA types got their hands on the business. MEC was late to the party. Much of mall retail had already shittified itself ages ago.
It seems to be happening everywhere. Give the worst product you can get away with while using marketing to get people to keep upgrading before they realize how bad the product is. While progressively lowering the quality of the product each year. "Planned Obsolescence" is the physical product equivalent of digital enshittification.
For an example of literal enshittification see water companies in England. Not discharging raw sewage into rivers and the sea would interfere with dividends to the PE owners.
