Habit as a central concept in marketing

Abstract

This article reorients the conceptual architecture of marketing theory. It is proposed that marketing is the dynamic force that economists and sociologists seek to explain the centrality of habit in everyday life. Questioning the arguments proffered by these twin disciplines, we submit that these processes of habit formation are not ‘undesigned’ or ‘hidden’, but perfectly visible and articulated by theorists and practitioners alike. These debates are complex. We outline their ‘strategic logic’, tracking the constitutive function of the discourse of habit. We unravel the theorized processes of habit formation as these are emplaced at the subconscious level and conceptualized via the ‘subconscious self’. Theoretically, we account for these power relations by uniting the concepts of biopolitics and anatomo-politics in terms of ‘bio-anatomopolitics’. Marketing, therefore, must be considered a disciplinary vehicle oriented towards habit creation and the destabilization of inertia.

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