The Machiavellian Marketing Framework (MMF): A Paradigm for Control, Perception, and Psychological Strategy in the Algorithmic Era

The Machiavellian Marketing Framework (MMF) is introduced as a post-persuasion paradigm of market influence designed for algorithmic economy. Integrating insights from behavioral psychology, narrative theory, and power philosophy, MMF proposes that dominance in modern markets emerges not through persuasion but through the orchestration of psychological inevitability. It redefines marketing as a system of psychological governance in which context, scarcity, and perception are deliberately engineered to create alignment between audience and brand that appears self-originated. Drawing on philosophical antecedents from Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Foucault, MMF situates influence as an act of control over social belief systems rather than mere communication. This framework contends that in an era governed by algorithms and attention scarcity, competitive advantage stems from a brand's capacity to architect belief, manipulate perception, and manufacture inevitability. MMF expands marketing scholarship by reframing influence as an emergent from of strategic psychology, one that exposes the moral neutrality of control in digital commerce.