>Rather it has to do with segments of customers genuinely needing a given feature, and they won't buy the product unless it has the feature.

there is another reason feature creep happens for certain categories of products, which is regulation. If a law is passed mandating industry X needs to support Y that feature will be added for any product wanting to sell to the market that has mandated the feature.

any analysis that misses these kinds of real world scenarios is not that interesting.