"When marketers develop segmentations as a market device, they do so not as something that ???unveils segments already there". Rather this is an ontological process ??? an attempt to produce segments"

“These market devices, from measurements to architecture to pricing to analysts, and so on, encompass the “material and discursive assemblages that intervene in the construction [and performance] of markets”(Muniesa et al. 2007, p. 2). When marketers develop segmentations as a market device, they do so not as something that “unveils segments already there” (Kjellberg and Helgesson 2007, p. 144). Rather this is an ontological process – an attempt to produce segments. Performance-oriented understanding of markets and ‘market making’ are about particular enactments of the social that serve to produce both consumption and production through sets of material and discursive practices (see Law and Urry 2004). This demonstrates how the notion of “consumers” is fully susceptible to change, and how the process of assembling and reassembling consumers is continual and indicative of a dynamic and iterative form of surveillance. As corporations attempt to meet the needs of consumers that they “know” and define, they co-construct consumers through the ascription of needs, desires, socio-economic status..”