Information AboutCommoditization |
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Business and economics In the business world, commodification is process that transforms the market for a unique, branded product into a market based on undifferentiated price competition. In economic terms, the market changes from one of Monopolistic Competition to one of Perfect Competition . Commodification can be the desired outcome of an entity in the market, or it can be an unintentional outcome that no party actively sought to achieve. Marxist theory In Marxist political economy, ''commodification'' takes place when economic value is assigned to something that traditionally would not be considered in economic terms, for example, an idea, identity, gender. For instance, sex becomes a marketed commodity, something to be bought and sold rather than freely exchanged. Human beings can be considered subject to commodification in contexts such as Genetic Engineering , Cloning , Eugenics , Social Darwinism , Fascism , Mass Marketing and Employment . Criticism The process of commodification often has negative connotations for the individuals who discuss it. Karl Marx extensively criticized the social impact of commodification under the name Commodity Fetishism . A criticism of commodification is that it ignores individual agency and the individual's ability to resist the never-ending spread of the market. Commodification itself became popular during the rise of critical discourse analysis in Semiotics . External links
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