ABSTRACT
This chapter examines discourses on the digitalization of consumption based on field work conducted at some of the many trade fairs for e-commerce that pop up every year in different cities all over Europe. It builds on studying the role played by consumer research in the performative enactment of consumer subjectivities. The chapter focuses on how consumer subjectivities are constructed and how particular ways of understanding the market and consumption are both presented and gain ground. Digital devices, technologies and services were centre stage. Consumers, in turn, were the objects that could be traced and tracked with the use of various solutions. E-commerce is a growing field that is trying to establish itself as distinct from the physical form of retailing. Big data is a term that has come to signify the methods by which the traces that people leave online can be saved and analysed in order to be processed to show connections and patterns.
