BEYOND HUMAN AND ALGORITHM: NIETZSCHE, DIGITAL CONSUMER IDENTITY AND EXISTENTIAL MARKETING
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This review article aims to explain the formation of consumer identity in the digital era under an algorithmic regime that has shifted marketing from persuasive communication towards mechanisms of psychological governance and perception engineering. It argues that the integration of digital technologies into everyday life moves consumers towards a transhuman condition and increases the risk of losing self-determination as behaviour becomes more predictable within automated systems. The article draws on Nietzschean philosophy to analyse the dynamics of herd morality, herd instinct, and the figure of the last man, which reflect hedonistic culture, the pursuit of external approval, and depressive passivity amplified by social media and advanced behavioural nudging. It further proposes understanding the will to power as a creative drive for meaning-making and for transforming desire into psychological inevitability within brand belief architectures. In addition, the concept of eternal recurrence is employed as an ethical framework to test the authenticity of existence and to resist the vacuum of meaning associated with addictive online engagement. The article also integrates the Machiavellian Marketing Framework and the concept of existential value production to propose strategic directions through which marketers can design approaches that respect human potential, reduce the reproduction of herd behaviour, and support consumers’ self-overcoming from the last man towards the condition of the Übermensch in contemporary digital life.
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