ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what relations, and more particularly 'having', means in the context of markets. It also considers the question of relations in markets historically. The chapter suggests nothing in general about the efficacy of digital means of market attachment but it does throw the spotlight on other things that can get in the way even when advanced quanti-quali means of 'having' the customer – the new magic epistemologies – are in play. It then considers the limits of epistemological modelling in a context of proliferant, superabundant data for accomplishing market attachment. The chapter provides a brief discussion of the marketing work of Prudential Assurance Company and the payday lender Wonga. These two UK-based companies, despite the temporal distance that separates them and despite the quite different sets of techniques and technologies they employ, share a common concern with soliciting and securing the attachment of sets of customers often struggling to stay afloat in the economic margins of society.
