"Greed, Dream and Belief" Economic Sociology of Network Marketing: A Qualitative Study

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

2 MA in Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics, Alzahra University

10.22059/ijsp.2024.372630.671217

Abstract

Network marketing is a type of direct selling, which is also known as "multi-level marketing" or "multi-level direct selling". Although this type of marketing has become the most dynamic part of the economy today, it is often considered a controversial business. Insignificant income, low efficiency, negative public perceptions, low job satisfaction and high turnover among members are among the fundamental criticisms of this type of marketing. But the very important contradiction is that the existence of all these problems did not reduce the enthusiasm of the members and also did not reduce the growth of these organizations in terms of sales or membership. Some critics, especially psychologists, believe that this contradiction can be explained by "mind control" or "brainwashing" operations. But the point of view of economic sociology is very different. Economic sociology seeks to explain the social mechanisms of this type of economic action beyond psychological processes. Therefore, in this article, which is an exploratory study to explain the nature of network marketing in the paradigm of new economic sociology; embeddedness, the structure of the network of relationships and the characteristics of the economic actions of people have been explained. The findings of this article show that the pyramidal structure of this type of marketing is divided into three levels and the economic actions are different at each level. This pyramidal structure prevents the emergence of structural gaps and obtaining information for exit. Therefore, the longevity of members is necessarily based on something beyond mere economic utility.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Social Problems of Iran
Volume 14, Issue 2
May 2024
Pages 193-218

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