MLM

[icerat]

Skeptic and Kevin R Brown are correct as the list of peer reviewed that cite either FitzPatrick or Taylor are legion and here are some more:

icerat says - "maximara believes MLM to be a scam"

See!!! Icerat thinks MLM is a scam! He cited maximara!

I was challenging the points you were making

All you seem to be interested in doing is showing that Taylor and FitzPatrick have been mentioned in a few books and papers.

Whoopeedoodahh.

Koehn, Daryl (2001) "Ethical Issues Connected with Multi-Level Marketing Schemes" Journal of Business Ethics 29:153-160.

This article is not critical of MLM per se, it points out particular weaknesses of the model that can lead to unethical operations. While the paper makes a number of unsubstantiated (and unreferenced or poorly referenced) claims, I pretty much agree with the thrust of the authors comments.

Wong, Michelle. A. (2002) "China's Direct Marketing Ban: A Case Study of China's Response to Capital-Based Social Networks" Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal

This article explicitly mentions MLM companies like Amway, Avon, Mary Kay, and Tupperware as being legitimate. I'm starting to think you've never actually read many of the articles you are citing?

Even abstracts are critical: "The wake of the recession has witnessed a boom in direct selling schemes also known as pyramid selling, multi-level marketing or network marketing." Sarker, Rinita (1996) "Pyramid Selling" Journal of Financial Crime 3:3 Pg 266 - 268.

Which part of that was "critical"? I've been unable to get a copy of this paper as yet, but based on past experience it probably doesn't support you.

Highly respected publishers like Wiley have also had books slamming MLMs as have Juta Academic in works like Higgs, Philip and Jane Smith (2007) Rethinking Our World

Wiley also has many books very supportive of MLM, including some with some silly claims. What's your point?

Even those that don't hold that all MLMs are pyramid schemes have said there are series problems with them:

Umm, even I say there are serious problems with some MLMs. Again, what's your point?

And the list of peer reviewed articles and articles in reliable publications questioning MLMs and their methodology goes on but yet like homeopathy which has even more evidence that it doesn't work they are allowed to run amok.

oh good grief. 75 years of history, hundreds of billions in sales shows MLMs can and does work. Here's a list of thousands of people, just from one company, who have been extraordinarly successful through MLM. The active denial of reality you undertake is purely astounding.

 

[Skeptic]

With Amway, what is it that the IBO provides?

A fool to buy the crap the upline tells them so as to feed the higher-ups in the pyramid.

 

[Skeptic]

All you seem to be interested in doing is showing that Taylor and FitzPatrick have been mentioned in a few books and papers.

Once confronted with the peer-reviewed articles critical of MLMs he claimed did not exist, these peer-reviewed articles magically became "a few books and papers, whooopeeduhdah".

 

[Skeptic]

What you are describing seems to be, by definition, an IBO that is NOT doing the "B" part - operating a business.

Yet another one of the 99% bad-apple IBOs that are giving the honest 1% such a bad name.

IBOs don't own a business. They just run a pyramid scheme trying to get people below them.

 

[icerat]

Once confronted with the peer-reviewed articles critical of MLMs he claimed did not exist, these peer-reviewed articles magically became "a few books and papers, whooopeeduhdah".

Again, more evidence of the amazing hypocrisay of people being blatantly unethical when accusing others of the same. What, are you going for the "takes one to know one" defence??

I never once said there were no peer-reviewed articles critical of MLMs. You are simply making that up.

If you've no intention of being honest, please go elsewhere.

 

[Skeptic]

I never once said there were no peer-reviewed articles critical of MLMs. You are simply making that up.

No, you just dismiss and belittle every such article someone posts as somehow "not counting". Since clearly you will do that to all and every peer-reviewed article that is critical of your precious MLM scam, your de facto attitude is, in fact, that there are no peer-reviewed articles critical of MLM that "count" in any way.

If you've no intention of being honest, please go elsewhere.

Hehe. Look, kids: an MLMer lecturing others about honesty. That's a good 'un.

 

[NewtonTrino]

oh good grief. 75 years of history, hundreds of billions in sales shows MLMs can and does work. Here's a list of thousands of people, just from one company, who have been extraordinarly successful through MLM. The active denial of reality you undertake is purely astounding.

You still aren't understanding the main point. It doesn't matter if a diamond makes a profit, they aren't successful if they have to have thousands of people losing money for them to make money. It's called a pyramid scam for a reason. Nobody said it's impossible to make money from amway, just that's it's unethical. Also most of the money made from shoving tools down their throats anyway (which I know you deny, we disagree).

 

[Kevin R Brown]

Your assumption of "maximum demand is still fixed" is incorrect. That's the role of marketing - to increase demand. Furthermore, there's a great deal of fluidity within the market, so you want to increase demand for cars you sell. Even if there's static overall demand you can make money by increasing demand for your brand (and decreasing that for the competitors).

This happens all the time across all industries.

This is just flatly wrong. There is always a fixed limit on demand; advertising and salesmanship gives you greater access to this demand - it cannot magically create new customers out of nothing.

Now, granted, demand is a fluid dynamic because people are fairly transient, but there is still always a limited pool of customers in any region at any one particular time.


You don't appear to be willing to listen to peer reviewed literature, however, so I doubt that I'll be able to convince you of the common nature of your sacred cow. Have fun; don't say we didn't try to warn you.

 

[maximara]

No, you just dismiss and belittle every such article someone posts as somehow "not counting". Since clearly you will do that to all and every peer-reviewed article that is critical of your precious MLM scam, your de facto attitude is, in fact, that there are no peer-reviewed articles critical of MLM that "count" in any way.

We had this kind of nonsense on the Wikipedia article on Multi-level marketing with an editor named Insider201283. I produced reliable source after reliable source that Insider201283 either claimed didn't exist or he engaged in 'this pull hat over eyes, stick fingers in ears, and go la la la very loud' nonsense as well.

At least icerat didn't present Kiyosaki as a reliable source which had to be the most unbelievable thing in the whole talk page archive.

 

[NewtonTrino]

We had this kind of nonsense on the Wikipedia article on Multi-level marketing with an editor named Insider201283. I produced reliable source after reliable source that Insider201283 either claimed didn't exist or he engaged in 'this pull hat over eyes, stick fingers in ears, and go la la la very loud' nonsense as well.

At least icerat didn't present Kiyosaki as a reliable source which had to be the most unbelievable thing in the whole talk page archive.

I don't know if it's the same one but Insider is another nick that Icerat uses. Given the fact that he also runs the biggest pro amway website it's likely that you were dealing with the same person.

 

[maximara]

I don't know if it's the same one but Insider is another nick that Icerat uses. Given the fact that he also runs the biggest pro amway website it's likely that you were dealing with the same person.

There were charges by other editors about Insider201283 having conflict on interest (there is a youtube channel under that exact same user name promoting Amway and Quixtar videos that I was unaware of at the time) but all he had on his page was that he was an "Australian living in Europe" so there is no way to really tell if he and Icerat were one and the same.

 

[NewtonTrino]

He's already admitted his name on this forum. He'll confirm he's the same person I
sure.

 

[Almo]

Part of the reason that I have an unusually good understanding of this business is that several of my beta users had quite large businesses (tools). I got to see the numbers while debugging the program....

Hahah!

By Amway's own numbers cited in their TV ad, they helped 3 million people earn $6 billion in a year!

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116252

Wait. That's $2000 annually by their own admission. Not too good, really.

 

[maximara]

Hahah!

By Amway's own numbers cited in their TV ad, they helped 3 million people earn $6 billion in a year!

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116252

Wait. That's $2000 annually by their own admission. Not too good, really.

That is reasonably close to what numbers the other reliable sources I found gave either for specific MLMs or MLMs in general:

US$5,000 average annual income max for 90% of membership--(2000)Business Students Focus on Ethics (Praxiology): The international Annual of Practical Philosophy and Methodology Volume 8.

median annual income of $2,400 in all of direct sales--(2009)DSA cited in USAToday

Also according to two separate sources who claim to be MLM legal experts (Jeff Babener, MLM Lawyer and Rod Cook B.s., M.A., M.B.A) the 70% rule MLM supporters like to throw around was reduced in FTC v. JewelWay (1997) to 50% and this new rule was reaffirmed in FTC v. Futurenet (1998). Jeff Babener and Rod Cook go on to say that this period the FTC started moving to the position that to be considered a customer of a MLM you cannot belong to the program. Cook's exact words on the matter are "Retail Sales does not include sales made by a participant in a multi-level marketing program to other participants, recruits, or the participant’s own account."

If people Babener and Cook are being accurate that would mean that personal consumption no longer counts which given MLMs are supposed to be business opportunities not wholesale clubs makes sense.

 

[maximara]

oh good grief. 75 years of history, hundreds of billions in sales shows MLMs can and does work. Here's a list of thousands of people, just from one company, who have been extraordinarly successful through MLM. The active denial of reality you undertake is purely astounding.

A amwaywiki article is the best you can come up with?!?

I should point out that even publications like the Western Journal of Communication, Journal of Small Business Management, and International Journal of Service Industry Management can't agree on how long MLMs have existed (one puts it no more than 30 years ago) so the "75 years of history" claims is BS never mind that Homeopathy has been around since 1796 and despite being shown not to work as early as 1842 people still believe it works.

 

[Skeptic]

Wait. That's $2000 annually by their own admission. Not too good, really.

And that's sales volume, not profit.

 

[icerat]

This is just flatly wrong. There is always a fixed limit on demand; advertising and salesmanship gives you greater access to this demand - it cannot magically create new customers out of nothing.

Sorry Kevin, but that is flat out wrong. That's what's marketing is for - to stimulate demand for your product.

Now, granted, demand is a fluid dynamic because people are fairly transient, but there is still always a limited pool of customers in any region at any one particular time.

Sure, as there is for all businesses, and if you which to expand in that region then you create increased demand or move in to other market segments.

You don't appear to be willing to listen to peer reviewed literature, however, so I doubt that I'll be able to convince you of the common nature of your sacred cow. Have fun; don't say we didn't try to warn you.

Huh? Have you fallen for Skeptic's and Maximara's BS? A claim was made (99% lose money or some such) which they said was well documented in peer reviewed literature. I stated that was wrong, there was no peer reviewed literature supporting the claim. They proceeded to list various documents, some peer-reviewed and some not. None of the peer-reviewed literature supported the claim, and I'm not aware of any that does.

Look at the source documents yourself, I did.

 

[icerat]

We had this kind of nonsense on the Wikipedia article on Multi-level marketing with an editor named Insider201283. I produced reliable source after reliable source that Insider201283 either claimed didn't exist or he engaged in 'this pull hat over eyes, stick fingers in ears, and go la la la very loud' nonsense as well.

No you didn't, you kept quoting Taylor and Fitzpatrick, and when taken to WP:RS it was agreed by third parties they were NOT reliable sources. I simply haven't had the time to spend debating with you WP and help get those articles into respectable encyclopedic shape.

At least icerat didn't present Kiyosaki as a reliable source which had to be the most unbelievable thing in the whole talk page archive.

Kiyosaki's "business school" book is self-published (like Taylor & Fitzpatrick's work) and thus not considered a reliable source.

 

[icerat]

A amwaywiki article is the best you can come up with?!?

Are you seriously now claiming that Amway (the original source for the list on AmwayWiki) is faking all their achievement recognition levels? Seriously?

I should point out that even publications like the Western Journal of Communication, Journal of Small Business Management, and International Journal of Service Industry Management can't agree on how long MLMs have existed (one puts it no more than 30 years ago) so the "75 years of history" claims is BS never mind that Homeopathy has been around since 1796 and despite being shown not to work as early as 1842 people still believe it works.

The fact those journals are so wrong on that issue speaks volumes as to the reliability of those journals on this topic. Or are you now claiming that Amway didn't begin using MLM until the 79s or 80s? All that previous history has been faked there too??

Some serious conspiracy going on here ... Amway has even managed to create a fake investigation into their operations, just to try and trick people into believing they've been operating longer than 30 years! They've even hacked google and newspaper archives and inserted fake news articles and advertising into old newspapers!!!

Or ... perhaps ... just maybe ... those journals just aren't reliable sources on the topic ...

Anyway, I was in errror - at least 65 years, not 75 years. Nutrilite began in 1934 but introduced a multilevel compensation plan in 1945 when they contracted with Mytinger & Casselberry for distribution. M&C introduced the first known multilevel compensation format, there may have been earlier ones. (see for example Herbig, P. & Yelkurm, R. (1997). A Review of the Multilevel Marketing Phenomenon. Journal of Marketing Channels, 6(1), 17-33)

 

[icerat]

If people Babener and Cook are being accurate that would mean that personal consumption no longer counts which given MLMs are supposed to be business opportunities not wholesale clubs makes sense.

The FTC has since explicitly clarified that personal consumption is considered a retail sale, if purchased through legitimate demand. (sources and discussion on this topic available here)

That doesn't mean it's necessarily sensible to focus just on internal consumption (I don't think it is), but if done legitimately it's not illegal.