The consumer does what the marketeers want, which do what the executives want, and round we go. It's a vicious cycle of inefficiency from people trying to get larger parts of the pie rather than growing the pie.
To be fair, this is how causality works. It's not only about who did it. In practice the ball rolls as much because it was kicked as because it is round and because it isn't made of solid lead.
The shareholders will end up with the valuation they end up with, but are immune from prosecution in all but the most explicit and egregious cases.
If they vote in directors, which they suspect will hire a criminal CEO, that’s enough levels of indirection that unless they write a memo explicitly stating to do so (and maybe even then!), the worst outcome for them is the valuation of the company drops to zero and they lose their capital, minus whatever dividends have been pulled out.
That is barring potential criminal conspiracy anyway, which would require concrete actions in furtherance of a conspiracy, which would be difficult to prove without something like that memo.
And yet the owners rely on the market/consumer giving them money to put food on the table and afford a roof over their head. Which is to say, user?id=delusional above was mostly joking.