Guest Editors
Leyland Pitt, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Canada, lpitt@sfu.ca
Jan Kietzmann, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, Canada, jkietzma@uvic.ca
Joey Lam, School of Business, Trinity Western University, Canada, joey.lam@twu.ca
Key deadlines
Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01/10/2026
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 01/02/2027
Email for submissions: joey.lam@twu.ca
Introduction
The past decade has witnessed growing concern over the progressive deterioration of products, services, platforms, and brand experiences that once delivered clear value to consumers. Increasingly, organizations appear to attract customers through convenience, innovation, and trust, only to later reduce quality, remove features, intensify monetization, expand surveillance, or fragment offerings into subscription-dependent ecosystems. Technology critic Cory Doctorow popularized the term “enshittification” to describe this process in digital platforms, arguing that many firms follow a pattern in which value is initially directed toward users before gradually being redirected toward advertisers, data extraction, and shareholder interests. More recently, scholars and commentators have suggested that enshittification extends well beyond platforms into physical products, smart devices, services, and broader brand ecosystems.
This special issue seeks to establish enshittification as an important phenomenon within product and brand management research. While related topics such as declining service quality, platform exploitation, subscription fatigue, planned obsolescence, and trust erosion have received scholarly attention, these issues are often studied in isolation. The concept of enshittification provides a broader integrative framework for understanding how organizations progressively shift value away from consumers while increasing dependency, complexity, and extraction. As connected technologies, digital infrastructures, and recurring revenue models become increasingly central to modern business, understanding these dynamics has become both theoretically and practically urgent.
The special issue also foregrounds the consumer perspective by drawing on theories such as Belk’s extended self. Many products, services, and platforms become deeply embedded in consumers’ identities, routines, and relationships. Consequently, deterioration in trusted offerings may be experienced not simply as inconvenience or dissatisfaction, but as a personal and emotional violation. This perspective opens new opportunities for research examining consumer trust, attachment, resistance, coping strategies, and long-term brand relationships in contexts of perceived degradation.
We invite conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions from scholars across marketing, consumer research, information systems, strategy, innovation, and related disciplines. Potential topics include feature removal, forced subscriptions, surveillance and data extraction, algorithmic governance, smart products, fragmented ecosystems, consumer resistance, ethical implications, regulatory responses, and strategies for avoiding or reversing enshittification. Diverse methodological approaches and interdisciplinary perspectives are strongly encouraged.
By bringing together emerging scholarship on this timely issue, the special issue aims to advance theory, inform managerial practice, and contribute to broader discussions surrounding consumer welfare, digital governance, sustainable innovation, and the future of trusted brand relationships in increasingly connected markets
This special issue will particularly welcome contributions across the following areas, among others:
• Conceptual and empirical investigations of enshittification as a product and brand management phenomenon, including its antecedents, mechanisms, and consumer consequences
• The role of the extended self in shaping consumer responses to product degradation, feature removal, forced upgrades, and data extraction
• Enshittification through addition: how the incremental layering of surveillance, advertising, and monetization infrastructure degrades trusted offerings over time
• Enshittification through subtraction: the strategic removal of previously included features and entitlements, and its effects on consumer trust, loyalty, and brand equity
• Enshittification through division: the fragmentation of unified offerings into modular, subscription-dependent ecosystems and its implications for consumer autonomy and product reliability
• Enshittification through multiplication: how the proliferation of product variants, editions, and add-ons creates complexity that advantages suppliers over consumers
• The intersection of enshittification and the Internet of Things (IoT): smart products, connected devices, and the erosion of ownership
• Consumer resistance, exit, voice, and coping strategies in the face of product and brand deterioration
• Brand trust, brand authenticity, and the long-term reputational consequences of enshittification
• Regulatory, policy, and ethical dimensions of enshittification, including data privacy, informed consent, and consumer protection
• Organizational and managerial antecedents of enshittification: short-termism, shareholder primacy, and the misalignment of incentives
• Strategies for avoiding or reversing enshittification, including design principles that preserve consumer autonomy, trust, and the integrity of the extended self
• Cross-industry and cross-cultural comparisons of enshittification dynamics and consumer responses
• Methodological contributions to the study of offering quality deterioration and consumer experience over time
Full papers submitted to this special issue are subject to the standard review procedures and rules of JPBM. Please note that:
• Papers need to be submitted online to the Special Issue on "Enshittification, Products, and Brands" through the ScholarOne System (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jpbm).
• Author guidelines must be strictly followed (see https://www.emerald.com/jpbm).
• For informal enquiries, you can contact the guest editors.
• Submissions will be blind-reviewed by at least two reviewers.
• Based on the reviewers' recommendation, the guest editors and the Editors-in-Chief will decide whether the particular submission is accepted as it is, revised and resubmitted, or rejected.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
The ScholarOne site will not open for submissions until 1 October 2026. The site will remain open until 1 February 2027.
Submissions to the special issue can only be made during this window and should be made by selecting the special issue from the drop-down menu, which will become available on 1 October 2026.
References
Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168.
Belk, R. W. (2013). Extended self in a digital world. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(3), 477–500.
Belk, R. (2018). Ownership: The extended self and the extended object. In Psychological ownership and consumer behavior (pp. 53–67). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Charlton, A. (2023). BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription, to refocus on software services. Forbes, September 7. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/alistaircharlton/2023/09/07/bmw-drops-controversial-heated-seats-subscription-to-refocus-on-software-services/
Doctorow, C. (2022). How monopoly enshittified Amazon. Pluralistic. Retrieved from https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification
Doctorow, C. (2023). The 'enshittification' of TikTok. Wired, January 23.
Doctorow, C. (2024). Dirty words and politically correct. Medium. Retrieved from https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-10-14-pearl-clutching-this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system-266e69b4c8f9
Doctorow, C. (2025). Enshittification: Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it. New York, NY: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Korosec, K. (2026). The FTC's data-sharing order against GM is finally settled. TechCrunch, January 14. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/14/the-ftcs-data-sharing-order-against-gm-is-finally-settled/
McCurry, C. (2024). LinkedIn fined 310 million euros by Data Protection Commission. Independent, October 24. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/linkedin-ireland-data-protection-gdpr-french-b2634975.html
Park, A., Hannah, D. R., Kietzmann, J., & Pitt, L. (2026). Enshittification comes to 'smart' products. MIT Sloan Management Review, 67(3), 18–19.
Reuters. (2025). Microsoft to lift productivity suite prices for businesses, governments. Reuters, December 4. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/business/microsoft-lift-productivity-suite-prices-businesses-governments-2025-12-04/
Sezer, O., Gino, F., & Norton, M. I. (2018). Humblebragging: A distinct—and ineffective—self-presentation strategy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(1), 52–74.
Taylor, J. (2025). Amazon reveals cause of AWS outage that took everything from banks to smart beds offline. The Guardian, October 24. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/24/amazon-reveals-cause-of-aws-outage
List of topic areas
(i) Conceptual and empirical investigations of enshittification as a product and brand management phenomenon, including its antecedents, mechanisms, and consumer consequences;
(ii) The role of the extended self in shaping consumer responses to product degradation, feature removal, forced upgrades, and data extraction;
(iii) Enshittification through addition: how the incremental layering of surveillance, advertising, and monetization infrastructure degrades trusted offerings over time;
(iv) Enshittification through subtraction: the strategic removal of previously included features and entitlements, and its effects on consumer trust, loyalty and brand equity;
(v) Enshittification through division: the fragmentation of unified offerings into modular, subscription-dependent ecosystems and its implications for consumer autonomy and product reliability;
(vi) Enshittification through multiplication: how the proliferation of product variants, editions, and add-ons creates complexity that advantages suppliers over consumers;
(vii) The intersection of enshittification and the Internet of Things (IoT): smart products, connected devices, and the erosion of ownership; and
(viii) Consumer resistance, exit, voice, and coping strategies in the face of product and brand deterioration, and among others.
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jpbm
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emerald.com/jpbm
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
