Commodification
Etymology
From commodity, via Latin commoditas, "convenience, advantage," from commodus, "suitable, fitting." A commodity is something fitted for exchange. To commodify is to fit something for the market that wasn’t there before — the suffix marking the process of conversion.
noun · /kuh-mod-ih-fih-KAY-shun/
Turning something not previously bought and sold — time, attention, care, nature — into a market good.
What it names
The quiet expansion of the market into corners of life that used to sit outside it, and what changes once a price is attached.
Example
Apps that pay you to walk or sleep are a small commodification of the body’s ordinary functions.
Related idea
Reification is the mental move (treating an abstraction as a thing); commodification is the economic one (giving it a price).