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Mormonism and Multilevel Marketing Companies

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139 points cdepman | 2 comments | 18 Jul 20 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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cornstalks ◴[18 Jul 20 16:16 UTC] No.23882400[source]▶
I don't have access to the paper so I can't comment on its entirety, but the abstract is spot on in my personal experience.

One thing not mentioned in the abstract (but perhaps it's mentioned in the paper) is how many missionaries do door-to-door sales when the return home. Many don't, but a nontrivial number do. I suspect that that missionaries play a role in the popularity of MLMs: either because of former missionaries joining MLMs (because some missionary skillsets are applicable to MLM marketing/selling), or because a nontrivial number of people in Utah have a soft spot for missionaries and I think MLMs often exploit that same soft spot.

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1. dorian-graph ◴[18 Jul 20 16:22 UTC] No.23882448[source]▶
I would have some doubts about this because the LDS members who go on missions are predominantly male and from what I'm aware of, those members involved in MLM are predominantly female.

There has been a large increase in the number of female members serving missions since a few years ago though, but has MLM already been popular since before that?

These are verifiable things though, if you have the data.

There is a large amount of male returned missionaries who do stints at a handful of companies (e.g. some solar one) who do door-to-door sales though, and can leverage their former experience.

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2. anonAndOn ◴[18 Jul 20 16:48 UTC] No.23882679[source]▶
I'd imagine going door to door offering X% savings on your monthly electric bill is so much easier than pitching the Native Americans are actually just a 3000 year old lost tribe of Israel. [0]

[0]https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/morm...