In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, companies face significant challenges, chief among them: how to maintain product quality and user satisfaction while balancing growth, revenue, and competition. Enter the concept of “enshittification”, a term coined by Cory Doctorow in his book by the same title to describe the gradual decay of digital services as companies prioritize short-term profit over user experience. This phenomenon has plagued some of the most popular tech platforms, leading to frustrated users, declining engagement, and eventual market irrelevance.
But here’s the good news – you don’t have to fall into this trap! By integrating comprehensive market research into your product development process, you can avoid the deadly cycle of enshittification. In this post, we’ll explore how you can protect your product from this fate and how market research can be your secret weapon.
What is ‘Enshittification’ and Should You Care?
In a nutshell, enshittification occurs when a company’s product or service starts strong, and provides value and user satisfaction but degrades as time goes on. Typically when companies scale their product/service, the user experience becomes less of a priority and what is leveraged instead is the monetary gain through ads, data harvesting, and other intrusive monetization tactics. It takes only a few frustrating experiences on a platform or with a product before you’ll see decreased customer loyalty and, ultimately, the decline of the platform. What makes this hard for some companies to understand is it is death by a thousand cuts. It’s rarely any ‘major’ thing that sends your customer running, it’s all the cumulative negative experiences that add up. Before you know it, your customers have either decamped to a competitive product, or have completely changed their habits so as to avoid needing to interact with your product/platform.
Why does this matter to you?
If your company is invested in a customer-facing product or service, you’re not just competing with other companies, you’re also competing for your users’ attention and trust. Losing these key components can have devastating long-term effects. A product that once delighted users can quickly become the subject of complaints, negative reviews, and, ultimately, abandonment.
The Three Stages of Enshittification
Let’s break down the typical trajectory of enshittification, according to Cory Doctorow:
- The Golden Age (Early Growth): The platform offers value without much interference. Users are happy, and growth is organic.
- The Monetization Phase (Middle Stage): As the platform grows, profit becomes a priority. Companies introduce ads, upsells, and sometimes unnecessary changes to generate more revenue, often sacrificing user experience in the process.
- The Decline (Endgame): The user experience deteriorates significantly, and people start to leave in droves. Services become bloated, slow, or full of irrelevant ads, and the platform ends up losing its once-loyal base. We don’t need to name any specific names here, you likely can think of one (or many) examples on your own!
How to Avoid Enshittification: The Power of Market Research
The key to ensuring that your product doesn’t follow this unfortunate path lies in your approach to market research. Here’s how research can help:
1. Keep User Needs Front and Center
Qualitative market research allows you to gain a deep understanding of your target audience’s needs, desires, and pain points. Through techniques like user interviews, focus groups, surveys, and behavioral analysis, you can gather valuable insights that ensure your product continues to deliver real value.
2. Identify and Test Monetization Strategies Early
A major contributor to enshittification is the introduction of profit-driven tactics that harm the user experience. Market research allows you to test different monetization strategies without sacrificing customer satisfaction. By leveraging A/B testing, user feedback, and usage data, you can identify the best ways to monetize your product that don’t compromise its value. We call this human-centered design, vs. design-thinking.
3. Monitor Customer Sentiment Continuously
In the age of social media and instant feedback, the moment your product starts slipping, users will let you know. Social media listening helps you keep a pulse on customer sentiment and quickly detect when things start to go south.
4. Avoid Feature Bloat
It’s easy to get carried away with adding features, especially as you chase competitors or feel the pressure to keep up with trends. But not every feature is worth pursuing. Excessive feature bloat often leads to a cluttered, confusing user experience. By conducting thorough UX market research, you can prioritize features that genuinely add value.
5. Don’t Lose Touch with Your Core Users
The worst-case scenario in the enshittification process is when companies forget who helped them get to where they are. In the scramble to acquire new users or meet revenue goals, companies often neglect their existing loyal customer base. Market research helps you track the evolving needs of your core users, ensuring that your product continues to serve them as it grows.
Why Ignoring Market Research Leads to Enshittification
Failing to invest in market research is a surefire way to set yourself on the path to enshittification. Without user insights, you’re essentially flying blind. You might introduce new features that don’t align with what your users actually want or make monetization decisions that damage the user experience. In the worst case, you’ll start making changes based purely on internal assumptions or short-term financial goals, disregarding the long-term health of your product.
Conclusion: How to Stay True to Your Product’s Purpose
Avoiding enshittification is not just about preventing the decline of your product, it’s about building a brand that users trust and love. By continuously engaging with your users, listening to their feedback, and using market research to inform your decisions, you can ensure that your product remains relevant, user-centric, and enjoyable.
The bottom line is this: If you focus on providing real value to your users and stay attuned to their needs, you’ll avoid the trap of enshittification. And with solid market research backing your decisions, you’ll have the insights you need to keep your product healthy, competitive, and, most importantly, loved by the people who matter most: your users.
