Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > The market will have you
View graph of relations

The market will have you: the arts of market attachment in a digital economy

Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSNChapter

Published
Publication date2017
Host publicationThe Arts of Market Attachment
EditorsFranck Cochoy, Joe Deville, Liz McFall
PublisherRoutledge
Pages108-131
Number of pages24
ISBN (electronic)9781315696454
ISBN (print)9781138904293
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Publication series

NameCRESC Culture, Economy and the Social
PublisherRoutledge

Abstract

What might it mean to say that the market will have you? This chapter tackles this question by using Gabriel Tarde’s central provocation that what we are, our identities, are not matters of ‘being’ but of ‘having’. The art of markets lies in how this having – of data, relations, associations, ties, ‘us’ – is practically accomplished. We test this idea by looking at how marketing conversations have been conducted in two consumer finance product cases: the industrial life assurance company Prudential Assurance and the payday loan company Wonga. These two cases, we argue, shed new light both on how we understand market attachment and what this might mean in a rapidly evolving digital economy.