ABSTRACT
Attachments are at the heart of market activities that variously frame, orient and discipline them. By considering that attachment results from a series of tests, in which both assets and agents are transformed, they make it possible to understand the conditions of success – and failure – of commercial transactions. In order to describe these attachment devices, this chapter suggests an entirely programmatic distinction between three types of devices: listening devices; co-production devices; and addiction devices. In one way or another, attachments succeed in becoming implicated in conversation, the co-production of goods and addiction. The easiest way to get consumers to recognise that they really want the proposed good is to organise a face-to-face encounter between the seller and the customer. The internet provides a fantastic platform for launching and maintaining, on a large scale and at low cost, this kind of personalised conversation, which leads customers to make explicit what they like and what they expect.
