The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger

The advent of the Industrial Age did more than just enable industry to produce products much more efficiently.
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The economies of scale they were gaining in the factory demanded economies of scale in the market.
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So the customers who once looked you in the eye while hefting your wares in the market were transformed into consumers. In the words of industry analyst Jerry Michalski, a consumer was no more than "a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash." Power swung so decisively to the supply side that "market" became a verb: something you do to customers.