Abstract
Advances in information technology have enabled consumers to connect and communicate as they never have before. This chapter conceptualizes information and the digital machines that enable contemporary connection and communication as being part of a “Moveable Feast.” A brief historical review tracing the impact and evolution of information technology on consumers’ lives and the marketplace is first provided. Culminating the historical review is a metaphorical description of the current period as a “Moveable Feast” of information, whereby consumers and digital machines interact to create and share information “dishes” with other consumers worldwide. With this guiding metaphor in place, current marketing-relevant information phenomena are described within a framework of three important digital dyads proposed to exist between humans and machines. Deep discussion of machine–machine, human–machine, and human–human dyads points to the importance of information as a resource that consumers create and exchange in the contemporary marketplace. This chapter concludes by encouraging marketers and marketing researchers to consider the impact and importance of digital information and information technology on consumers’ ability to connect and communicate with digital machines and with one another.