The dividualised consumer: sketching the new mask of the consumer

Abstract

Recent online marketing innovations such as ad-servers, ad-networks and ad-exchanges allow marketers to extract value from consumer data in new ways. But these new market devices do not just exploit technological innovations. They are constructed around a revolutionary new mask of the consumer. They treat consumers not as fixed individuals but as dividualised consumers – that is to say, collections of data that can be exposed, dissected and segmented into new marketable groups. After sketching out how marketing devices and theories have worked to define new marketplace behaviours, the paper turns to Deleuze’s explanation of control societies to consider the social implications of these new marketing techniques within societies that are increasingly mediated through networked relationships.

Keywords:

• ad-networks
• ad-exchanges
• dividual
• Deleuze
• online marketing

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Cluley

Robert Cluley is a Lecturer in Marketing at Nottingham University Business School. His research sets out a social study of marketing – in which marketing is viewed as something people do to other people. His research has been published in leading academic journals including Organisation Studies, Organization and Marketing Theory.

Stephen D Brown

Steven D. Brown is Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Leicester. His research interests are around social and collective remembering, particularly within ‘vulnerable’ groups. He is author of The Social Psychology of Experience: Studies in Remembering and Forgetting (Sage, 2005, with David Middleton); Psychology without Foundations: History, Philosophy and Psychosocial Theory (Sage, 2009, with Paul Stenner) and Vital Memories: Affect, ethics and agency (Routledge, 2014, with Paula Reavey).

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