Seems ironic when we consider the narrative of businesses talking about “rising consumer expectations”… yet, on the other hand are multiplying their core failings by making decisions to profit maximise at the expense of said consumer.
interesting angle, I hadn't considered that side of it.
it's probably somewhat true, in that people have been trained by certain outlier companies to expect hyper-speed and efficiency, and then get pissed off with "normal" companies for not living up to that.
I don’t know if I 100% understand your meaning, but my sense is that this is an extremely profound point.
This notion that you can impress customers without providing them value….. there’s something in that. We perhaps overestimate the extent to which people can discern genuine value.
Perhaps this is simply the essence of snake oil - that in modern times has become infinitely more sophisticated and smooth.
Alex, this landed differently than most strategy pieces.
You’ve spent years saying difference beats better. And you’re right. But this piece points at something real: when “better” becomes genuinely rare, it starts to look like difference.
Which means consistency might be the new moat. Not innovation. Not reinvention. Just: keep doing what you were doing while everyone else quietly gets worse trying to save money.
I am not sure I agree that everything reached a stage of being good, ever. Let me split hairs with you for a moment. I left full-time marketing and management consulting back in 1997. There was a seismic shift going on during that period, arguably led by Michael Hammer's Reengineering program and book of the same name. It was a time when technology was being leveraged to cut costs along with the emergence of the CEO axman being paid astronomic amounts of money to cut costs and maximize profits. What these corporations became very good at was creating the perception of maintaining quality while cost cutting and downgrading their products and services. The Kraft purchase of Cadbury is a perfect example. Kraft outsourced production to Poland. Everyone in Britain knew the product quality had dramatically declined. Most others around the world were not institutionalized enough to notice. What Kraft counted on was the strength of the brand name to carry them across the quality divide until British consumers had largely forgotten what the original Cadbury Milk Chocolate or Cadbury Cream Egg tasted like. I would add that in recent times particularly in the world of technology consumers have been hypnotized by the "Apple Effect" Apple lifted an entire industry where consumers believed quality had substantially increased e.g. put a cheap laptop in a brushed stainless steel case and the perception of quality rises dramatically.
This is a great comment, and I can’t disagree with the nuance.
And the forces play out differently in each industry.
I do however think that in the macro there was - at minimum - a perception of improvement over time, if we zoom out enough.
For one thing, not so long ago there was simply a supply issue in a lot of markets (back in the 70s say). And then more recently we have had the advent of “good quality low cost” options - e.g. EasyJet, IKEA, Squarespace, Premier Inn kinda stuff, that effectively destroyed the purpose of the mid-market (which always assumed that cheap options were severely compromised).
There was also a rush to premiumisation for a long time too, so a lot of more luxury / high end options proliferating.
So adding this all together I do think we’ve broadly had a 50 year run of upward trajectory, which only now I think is tipping downward.
The six forces you listed interact multiplicatively rather than additively, and thats where the real strategic gap opens. A company that offshores AND automates AND enshittifies doesn't experience three separate quality drops. The offshore team runs AI tools with less domain context. The AI produces outputs the team cant quality-check because they lack the expertise to spot the errors. The enshittification removes the feedback loop that would have surfaced the compound degradation before the customer felt it. Each force amplifies the others.
Octopus makes more sense through this lens. The gap they exploited was the compound effect of competitors stacking so many cost-reduction forces that the degradation produced something genuinely broken. The strategic opportunity scales with the number of forces a competitor has layered simultaneously. One force produces a small quality gap. Four or five produces a chasm that "good service at a fair price" can walk straight through.
Okay does it make sense to do this, allow a quality drop in the face of making it cheaper.
AI offers you the chance to attack the time and hence the costs of admin tasks, services in a way not possible before.
The old way was "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" - John Wooden
Now the time to make has the potential to be massively reduced so you gain the time to make it right, if you need to and that could be massively reduced as well.
This is why the focus on service industries is key.
When it comes to physical, makers, the old phrase still stands.
Oh and the focus on costs, the costs are driven by the direct labour time, so why the focus on costs? It should be time.
Alex latest is another sharp observations of where companies have the opportunity to become THE BEST. Because being THE ONLY or being the one that beats the quality level of overenthusiastic AI deploying companies, in the end, are both about being THE BEST in the chosen market space. :-)
Seems ironic when we consider the narrative of businesses talking about “rising consumer expectations”… yet, on the other hand are multiplying their core failings by making decisions to profit maximise at the expense of said consumer.
interesting angle, I hadn't considered that side of it.
it's probably somewhat true, in that people have been trained by certain outlier companies to expect hyper-speed and efficiency, and then get pissed off with "normal" companies for not living up to that.
“How can we do everything a little bit worse, but a lot cheaper?”
Someone, somewhere, had the astute observation that consumers poorly understand value. Maybe not always, but certainly now, and in the future.
There's a complexity misdirection. Impress them with what you can do and how you can do it and they'll buy it.
The opportunity you mentioned is re-education. 'Ahh this is value...'
Companies are racing to what's tolerable because it's still making them a buck.
I don’t know if I 100% understand your meaning, but my sense is that this is an extremely profound point.
This notion that you can impress customers without providing them value….. there’s something in that. We perhaps overestimate the extent to which people can discern genuine value.
Perhaps this is simply the essence of snake oil - that in modern times has become infinitely more sophisticated and smooth.
You captured my point perfectly. 🙌🏾
Totally agree. Customer support is A LOT worse. In every industry. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/albertochierici_ai-customer-support-companies-will-be-a-flop-activity-7465507880083922945-a0N-
Alex, this landed differently than most strategy pieces.
You’ve spent years saying difference beats better. And you’re right. But this piece points at something real: when “better” becomes genuinely rare, it starts to look like difference.
Which means consistency might be the new moat. Not innovation. Not reinvention. Just: keep doing what you were doing while everyone else quietly gets worse trying to save money.
It also comes back to your individual belief system, and what you want to see in the world.
All of the successful brands have the dna of the founder within them.
Nice, always good to come across content on here that makes you think.
Very kind
I am not sure I agree that everything reached a stage of being good, ever. Let me split hairs with you for a moment. I left full-time marketing and management consulting back in 1997. There was a seismic shift going on during that period, arguably led by Michael Hammer's Reengineering program and book of the same name. It was a time when technology was being leveraged to cut costs along with the emergence of the CEO axman being paid astronomic amounts of money to cut costs and maximize profits. What these corporations became very good at was creating the perception of maintaining quality while cost cutting and downgrading their products and services. The Kraft purchase of Cadbury is a perfect example. Kraft outsourced production to Poland. Everyone in Britain knew the product quality had dramatically declined. Most others around the world were not institutionalized enough to notice. What Kraft counted on was the strength of the brand name to carry them across the quality divide until British consumers had largely forgotten what the original Cadbury Milk Chocolate or Cadbury Cream Egg tasted like. I would add that in recent times particularly in the world of technology consumers have been hypnotized by the "Apple Effect" Apple lifted an entire industry where consumers believed quality had substantially increased e.g. put a cheap laptop in a brushed stainless steel case and the perception of quality rises dramatically.
pasting my answer here too:
This is a great comment, and I can’t disagree with the nuance.
And the forces play out differently in each industry.
I do however think that in the macro there was - at minimum - a perception of improvement over time, if we zoom out enough.
For one thing, not so long ago there was simply a supply issue in a lot of markets (back in the 70s say). And then more recently we have had the advent of “good quality low cost” options - e.g. EasyJet, IKEA, Squarespace, Premier Inn kinda stuff, that effectively destroyed the purpose of the mid-market (which always assumed that cheap options were severely compromised).
There was also a rush to premiumisation for a long time too, so a lot of more luxury / high end options proliferating.
So adding this all together I do think we’ve broadly had a 50 year run of upward trajectory, which only now I think is tipping downward.
But nonetheless all your points stand.
The six forces you listed interact multiplicatively rather than additively, and thats where the real strategic gap opens. A company that offshores AND automates AND enshittifies doesn't experience three separate quality drops. The offshore team runs AI tools with less domain context. The AI produces outputs the team cant quality-check because they lack the expertise to spot the errors. The enshittification removes the feedback loop that would have surfaced the compound degradation before the customer felt it. Each force amplifies the others.
Octopus makes more sense through this lens. The gap they exploited was the compound effect of competitors stacking so many cost-reduction forces that the degradation produced something genuinely broken. The strategic opportunity scales with the number of forces a competitor has layered simultaneously. One force produces a small quality gap. Four or five produces a chasm that "good service at a fair price" can walk straight through.
Okay does it make sense to do this, allow a quality drop in the face of making it cheaper.
AI offers you the chance to attack the time and hence the costs of admin tasks, services in a way not possible before.
The old way was "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" - John Wooden
Now the time to make has the potential to be massively reduced so you gain the time to make it right, if you need to and that could be massively reduced as well.
This is why the focus on service industries is key.
When it comes to physical, makers, the old phrase still stands.
Oh and the focus on costs, the costs are driven by the direct labour time, so why the focus on costs? It should be time.
It’s always “a race to the bottom”.
Alex latest is another sharp observations of where companies have the opportunity to become THE BEST. Because being THE ONLY or being the one that beats the quality level of overenthusiastic AI deploying companies, in the end, are both about being THE BEST in the chosen market space. :-)