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The paper aims to describe the application of direct selling, the process of selling a consumer product or service from one person to another, in an environment that is not a permanent retail location.

The paper explores the application of direct selling from the perspective of companies that have built their business around direct selling and those who are evolving into direct selling. The paper focuses the examination on three companies participating in the direct selling category: The Longaberger Company, The Pampered Chef and The Tupperware Corporation.

The paper finds that direct selling is an increasingly important component of the marketing mix for many traditional, successful companies and presents some keys to success.

Successful direct selling companies in the future will help to maximize growth and optimize customer loyalty at all levels.

The purpose of this paper is to use a theoretical framework (institutional theory) to predict international market selection (IMS) for the direct selling industry.

The authors use independent variables taken from institutional theory to predict IMS for the direct selling industry, allowing the authors to show the relationship between institutional theory – defined independent variables and the relative attractiveness of international markets. The model is applied to a broad sample of 51 developed and emerging nations that comprise 91 percent of worldwide GDP.

The authors found that the hypotheses were confirmed. Institutional theory – defined independent variables did a good job of predicting the relative attractiveness of international markets.

The authors used cross sectional country level data to validate their model. One major implication: institutional theory appears to do an excellent job of predicting IMS in contrast to geographic proximity or cultural similarity for the direct selling industry.

Managers should consider formal and informal aspects of the institutional environment, when selecting new international markets.

In contrast to most IMS papers, the authors apply a theory to predict IMS outcomes, helping to provide greater potential generalizability. The authors show that selected dimensions of institutional theory do a good job of predicting IMS for the direct selling industry. Future efforts may wish to apply institutional theory to new IMS contexts. The authors conclude with managerial implications.

This paper aims to analyze the evolution of direct selling – a retail channel that successfully sold products ranging from cosmetics to radios to automobiles – to multilevel marketing (MLM), an industry now apparently heavily reliant on selling to itself. As the courts have found some MLM companies to be pyramid schemes, the analysis includes the overlap between the legal MLM model and an illegal pyramid scheme.

The development of direct selling in the USA was examined, followed by the factors contributing to the design and growth of the MLM model and its non-commission-based compensation structure. Then, the key legal decisions regarding illegal pyramid schemes operating under the guise of MLM, the relative stagnation of direct selling and the state of the MLM industry were examined.

As the MLM model operates on the dual premise of retailing through a network of distributors and recruiting new distributors to do the same, it was found that federal regulators and the courts consistently focus on the “retail question” – the existence and extent of sales to consumers external to the distributor network. The authors argue that without a significant external customer base, internal consumption by an ever-churning base of participants resembles neither employee purchases nor a buying club.

As the MLM model facilitated the growth of pyramid scheme fraud, creating victims rather than customers, this research highlights successful efforts to regulate this type of consumer fraud.

Few papers have been written on MLM and pyramids schemes, and none thus far has taken an historical perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dimensions of interpersonal trust which would affect the buyer-salesperson relationship in a direct selling situation. It also investigates consumers’ perceived risk and advantages of direct selling.

A questionnaire survey of consumers (and also non-consumers) of direct selling companies in Hong Kong was performed by means of mall-intercept interview. The major measurements were perceived risk, perceived advantages, trust dimensions, and repurchase intention.

The results show that there are six dimensions of interpersonal trust in the buyer-seller relationship in direct selling, but only one dimension (i.e. honesty) has a significant relationship with repurchase intention. The ability to shop at home is found to have the highest advantage rating of direct selling. In addition, direct selling is perceived to have a lower level of risk than unsolicited telephone call such as telemarketing.

This is the first study to investigate the effects of different dimensions of interpersonal trust on consumer buying behavior under a direct selling situation in Asia. The study also serves as a foundation for studying the applicability and usefulness of all trust measures in other western or non-western cultures/nations.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate trust in salespersons of direct selling companies. The major purpose of the study is to examine three alternative measures of trust and to assess the effects of consumer trust in the direct selling salesperson on intended purchase behavior in a non‐Western culture, Hong Kong.

The research was designed as a personal interview survey of purchasers and non‐purchasers of product from direct selling companies in Hong Kong. A street‐intercept method of personal interview was used in three major shopping areas. The major measurement was of three different measures of trust in buying behavior from direct selling companies.

Survey results show that the measures of trust are not equally significant in being related to intention to repurchase. Only one measure, “Affect Trust”, is statistically correlated to repurchase intention. This measure is based on emotions which are affective in nature.

Gaining trust is crucial to all salespeople, industrial and consumer alike, as trust facilitates an exchange relationship while mistrust hinders it. Consequently, having valid measures of trust is essential to ensuring that exchange relations are positive. The research to date has been in the context of Western cultures and is dated (ten or more years ago). The paper examines trust in a non‐Western culture. In addition, the sales relationships studied in the past have been non‐direct selling. The paper expands this domain as it looks at direct selling to consumers in a non‐fixed business location.

Considering the network externalities of online selling, this paper builds three different online direct selling models: manufacturer direct selling (MN model), network platform direct selling (NN model) and retailer direct selling (RN model). The optimal advertising and pricing decision and corporate profits under each selling model are investigated.

Combining the characteristics of online direct selling, this paper formulates direct selling models that are dominated by different companies as Stackelberg game models. Numerical analyses are carried out, along with the comparison of the equilibrium solutions for each model.

The authors' research shows that increasing network externalities is conducive to the development of enterprises. The network platform's profit is the lowest in the RN model and the highest in the NN one. The comparison of manufacturers' profits between the MN model and the NN model primarily depends on consumers' sensitivities for sales price and advertising promotion level. The manufacturer does not benefit from the RN model due to the lowest efficiency.

Coupled with three different online direct selling models and detailed analyses of the optimal solutions, this study has enriched the theoretical foundation of online direct selling. Moreover, this study extends the research of network externalities to the field of e-commerce, revealing the network externalities' influence on the decision-making of the e-supply chain.

The past two decades have witnessed little, if any, growth in the numbers of small firms with employees in the UK. At the same time, a substantial growth in the numbers of self‐employed without employees as a component of the UK national labour force has been witnessed. The current article reports on a recent study into direct selling that accounts for around 500,000 “independent contractors” at any one time, albeit, in this case, operating often as part of an invisible economy, though linked with household‐name direct selling companies. With the advent of more large companies, such as the recently privatised utilities, using direct selling as a distribution format, there is a strong case for achieving a wider understanding of the dynamics of this system.

Direct selling as a type of non‐store retailing continues to increase internationally and in Australia in its use and popularity. One non‐store retailing method, multilevel marketing or network marketing, has recently incurred a degree of consumer suspicion and negative perceptions. A study was developed to investigate consumer perceptions and concerns in New South Wales and Victoria. Consumers were surveyed to determine their perception of direct selling and its relationship to consumer purchasing decisions. Responses indicate consumers had a negative perception towards network marketing, while holding a low positive view of direct selling. There appears to be no influence of network marketing on consumer purchase decisions.

With the development of e-commerce and mobile payment, platform sales become unstoppable, and many manufacturers also encroach on online market by establishing direct selling channels. Channel conflict intensifies in online market and quality differentiation and is widely used in business practice as an effective way to alleviate such a competition. The authors study a retail platform's sales strategy and interactions with an upstream manufacturer's encroachment strategy in this paper. Unlike most online marketplace and encroachment research, product quality selection is also engaged in the present research to capture the motivation above.

The authors analyze a game-theoretical model that the platform as the first/second mover participates in strategic decision-making, and then jointly decides the product quality level with manufacturer.

The authors find that encroachment always profits the manufacturer and almost hurts the platform. Interestingly, the first-mover advantage can help the platform guide the manufacturer encroachment and promote a “win–win” situation when product quality level is relatively slight or obvious. Nevertheless, the second-mover advantage can help the platform alleviate the profit loss caused by encroachment when product quality level is moderate. Furthermore, suffered from encroachment loss, the platform can make a credible threat by sales termination to restrain manufacturer encroachment.

This paper innovatively explores the strategic interaction between manufacturer encroachment and quality differentiation in a platform supply chain, and further analyzes the first-mover advantage in this interaction, which fills the gaps of previous platform research and has great significances to enterprise production and operational decision in business practice.