Commodification is the transformation of goods, services, ideas and people into

commodities, or objects of trade. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun

Appadurai, is "any thing intended for exchange," or any object of economic value.
[1] People are commodifiedturned into objectswhen working, by selling their
labour on the market to an employer.[2] One of its forms is slavery. Others are,
the trading with animals and body parts through formalised or informalised organ
transplant.[3]

Commodification is often criticised on the grounds that some things ought not to be
treated as commoditiesfor example education, data, information and knowledge in
the digital age.[4]
The terms commodification and commoditization are sometimes used synonymously,[7]
particularly in the sense of this article, to describe the process of making
commodities out of anything that was not used to be available for trade previously;
compare anthropology usage.[8][9]

However, other authors distinguish them (as done in this article), with
commodification used in social contexts to mean that a non-commercial good has
become commercial, typically with connotations of "corrupted by commerce", while
commoditization is used in business contexts to mean when the market for an
existing product has become a commodity market, where products are interchangeable
and there is heavy price competition. In a quip: "Microprocessors are commoditized.
Love is commodified."[10]

The difference between the terms of commodification (Marxist political theory) and
commoditization (business theory) has been drawn by James Surowiecki (1998)[10] and
Douglas Rushkoff (2005).[11] In particular, Rushkoff argued that the words
commodification and commoditization were used to describe the two different
processes of the assignment of value to a social good, and the movement towards
undifferentiated competition, respectively:

Commodification (1975, origins Marxist political theory) is used to describe the

process by which something which does not have an economic value is assigned a
value and hence how market values can replace other social values. It describes a
modification of relationships, formerly untainted by commerce, into commercial
relationships in everyday use.

Commoditization (early 1990s in business theory) is the process by which goods that
have economic value and are distinguishable in terms of attributes (uniqueness or
brand) end up becoming simple commodities in the eyes of the market or consumers.
It is the movement of a market from differentiated to undifferentiated price
competition and from monopolistic to perfect competition.