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Companies may spend less on research and development (R&D) than would benefit society when they bear the cost and risk of a project but cannot capture all of its eventual benefits. That does not mean every consumer company underinvests, or that a larger R&D budget automatically produces better products. The evidence on whether short-term investor pressure broadly drives corporate underinvestment is contested; for consumers, the practical question is whether investment leads to useful improvements, meaningful alternatives, and quality they can assess.
Why might a company invest less in R&D than society would prefer?
R&D is an input with uncertain returns, not a guaranteed product improvement. A company pays for research and development, but the resulting knowledge, trained employees, or ideas for follow-on products may benefit other firms and consumers too. If the company cannot capture those wider gains, it may judge a project unattractive even when its total social value is positive. The OECD discusses cost, uncertainty, time to returns, and knowledge spillovers as rationales for public support of business R&D in Government Financing of Business R&D and Innovation (2016). These are explanations of incentives, not proof that every firm spends too little.
Costs, risk, and the wait for returns
A project can require substantial spending before a company knows whether the underlying idea will work, whether it can be manufactured, or whether customers will want it. Returns may arrive years later, while the costs appear earlier. That mismatch can make a technically promising project less attractive to a firm facing limited cash, uncertain demand, or competing investment needs.
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Benefits that spill beyond the company
When other businesses can learn from or build on a discovery, the investing company may capture only part of the benefit. The same can be true when an improvement creates value for customers that is difficult to turn into revenue. Public support for business R&D is sometimes justified on this gap between a firm’s private return and the broader social return; it is not a guarantee that any particular subsidy or project will be worthwhile.
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Other possible pressures
Financing constraints, management incentives linked to near-term results, investor monitoring horizons, and the balance between competing on price and competing through innovation may also shape budgets. Their importance will vary by firm and market; the available evidence does not rank them for consumer companies as a whole. A 2001 study, Short-term R&D bias, competition on cost rather than innovation, and time to market, describes how preferences for lower-risk, short-term product development may influence time-to-market choices when cost competition dominates. That is a conditional mechanism, not a finding that applies to every company.
Does shareholder short-termism explain corporate underinvestment?
It may influence decisions in particular firms or circumstances, but the broad claim that short-term pressure systematically makes companies sacrifice valuable long-term investment remains disputed. Neither aggregate spending trends nor R&D expenditure alone can establish why a particular company chose a particular budget.
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What the aggregate evidence can—and cannot—show
In its 2021 analysis of corporate-sector trends, the OECD describes the post-2008 concern that companies favored immediate results over productive investment. It concludes: “The existing evidence is not conclusive on the question of whether sluggish investment is rooted in short-termism.” The analysis discusses opposing interpretations: one approach found increased short-termism, while critics pointed to sluggish capital expenditure alongside continued R&D growth. The aggregate investment data it discusses concern listed firms and gross investment; they cannot, by themselves, prove or disprove the cause of investment choices.
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A review of claims about US companies
Steven N. Kaplan’s 2018 review, Are US Companies Too Short-Term Oriented? Some Thoughts, examines claims that US companies have become too focused on near-term results and concludes that there is very little long-term evidence consistent with the short-term critics’ predictions. It is a review and interpretation of evidence, not a causal experiment proving that short-term incentives never matter. The careful takeaway is narrower: pressures for near-term performance are plausible in individual decisions, but the available broad evidence does not settle whether they cause systematic underinvestment.
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How could underinvestment affect product quality and choice?
Successful R&D can contribute to performance, safety, durability, energy efficiency, usability, or new product varieties. But spending does not guarantee any of these outcomes: projects can fail, never reach production, or miss what users value. The link from a company’s R&D budget to a customer’s experience depends on what the company develops and what happens after launch.
Why spending and patents are imperfect proxies
R&D spending measures an input; patents and launches are possible outputs; reliability and performance are consumer outcomes. They should not be treated as interchangeable measures of product quality. In Competition and Innovation: A Theoretical Perspective (2023), the OECD notes that companies’ definitions and accounting allocations of R&D vary, some innovation is hard to quantify, and defensive patenting may not represent actual innovation. A higher reported R&D figure or more patents is therefore not, on its own, evidence that consumers received a better product.
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Competition can shape innovation and choice
Firms can have an incentive to improve products to win customers; coordination that suppresses innovation can weaken that incentive. An example is specific, not a general estimate of what happens across consumer markets: in its 2023 report The Role of Innovation in Competition Enforcement, the OECD recounts the Korean Fair Trade Commission’s February 2023 action involving Mercedes-Benz Group, BMW, Audi, and Volkswagen. The regulator concluded that coordination over emissions-cleaning technology restricted development and release of new diesel cars that could have achieved better gas-reduction performance, limiting innovation and consumer choice. This is the regulator’s conclusion as reported by the OECD, not evidence that R&D underinvestment is common across all industries.
Quality information affects the pressure to improve
Consumers cannot always judge quality before buying. The OECD’s 2019 report Trust and Online Markets describes online products that are experience goods, whose qualities become clearer after use, and credence goods, whose qualities may remain difficult to observe. When direct assessment is hard, consumers may rely on brand names or other imperfect signals. The OECD notes that weak quality information can reduce firms’ incentives to improve and deter entry by new competitors. Independent testing, warranties, or clear, verifiable claims can help consumers distinguish products, though none is a substitute for measuring the outcome that matters in a particular category.
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Consumers can contribute to product innovation too
Companies are not the only source of product ideas. A 2012 study by Eric von Hippel, Jeroen P. J. de Jong, and Stephen Flowers surveyed 1,173 UK adults and estimated that 6.1%—nearly 2.9 million people—had developed or modified consumer products in the previous three years. The authors also estimated that annual household spending on this kind of product development in the UK was more than 1.4 times the annual consumer-product R&D spending of all UK firms.
Those figures are estimates from that UK study and its definitions, not a global ratio or evidence that household projects replace firms’ research. They do show why a complete account of innovation should include users who adapt products to needs that manufacturers may not have anticipated.
How can you judge whether R&D is benefiting customers?
When comparing companies or products, look for evidence at several stages rather than relying on a single budget figure. The OECD’s cautions about R&D measurement and quality information point to a practical set of questions; these are comparison axes, not a standardized index.
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- Investment input: If comparing R&D amounts or intensity, check the accounting definition, reporting period, company scope, and sector. Different definitions and allocations can limit direct comparisons.
- Innovation output: Look for product launches, meaningful changes, or validated technical results. Treat patent counts as one imperfect signal, not a quality score.
- Consumer outcome: Identify the relevant measure for the category—such as reliability, safety, durability, performance, or variety—and seek evidence about that outcome rather than inferring it from spending.
- Competitive conditions: Consider whether customers have alternatives, whether new firms can enter, and whether there is evidence of coordination or barriers that could weaken innovation incentives.
- Quality information: Ask whether buyers can verify performance before purchase or must rely on use experience, independent testing, warranties, or claims that may be difficult to check.
These checks help separate what a company spent from what it developed and what customers actually received. They also keep an important uncertainty visible: evidence about listed companies, innovation policy, UK consumer innovation, or one competition case does not establish that consumer companies as a group underinvest in R&D.
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