Multilevel Marketing: Inner Workings, Socioeconomic Effects and the Islamic Juridical View

The intent of this article is to highlight the origins and development of multilevel marketing, its inner workings, and Islamic juridical views on its activities. One group of Muslim scholars permits it while others forbid it. The view forbidding it is the majority opinion. The juridical viewpoint forbidding multilevel marketing is more convincing than the view permitting it because of research-based evidence highlighting the reality of its inner workings, its socioeconomic harms and stronger juristic arguments opposing it. The inner workings of multilevel market reveal why the majority opinion forbids this so-called business model. This article aims to introduce a sharia-compliant version of the multilevel marketing model which may align with the Islamic perspective.

Optimal Management of Evolving Hierarchies

We study the optimal management of evolving hierarchies of revenue-generating agents. The initiator invests into expanding the hierarchy by adding another agent, who will bring revenues to the joint venture and who will invest herself into expanding the hierarchy further, and so on. The higher the investments (which are private information), the higher the probability of expanding the hierarchy. An allocation scheme specifies how revenues are distributed, as the hierarchy evolves. We obtain schemes that are socially optimal and initiator-optimal, respectively. Our results have potential applications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, social mobilization, and multilevel marketing. This paper was accepted by Manel Baucells, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

#FAITHANDFITNESSCOLLIDE: SPREADING THE WORD OF MULTILEVEL MARKETING IN CHRISTIAN WOMEN’S FITNESS INSTAGRAM POSTS

With the emergence of the coronavirus in 2020 led to the closing of gyms and churches, along with the “she-cession” in which women disproportionately left the workforce (Hammer, 2021), Christian women with an interest in fitness increasingly turned to home-fitness-based multilevel marketing (MLM). MLM companies like Beachbody, for example, saw a 300% increase in subscribers in 2020 (Haithman, 2020). Although MLMs encourage their distributors to think of themselves as “independent entrepreneurs,” these companies demand fealty -- putting Christian women who participate in a double bind: bound to company, family, and God, they must still position themselves as free agents and strong women in order to build their “fitness ministry” (Coach 8, 2020) and close the sale. We extend Sullivan & Delany’s (2017) framework of “evangelical entrepreneurial femininity” by asking how fitness complicates or shepherds the relationship between the independent entrepreneur, the MLM, and the patriarchal foundation of her religious practices. Our initial research suggests that Christian women navigate the potential shame of occupying a masculine economic role and a muscular body by reframing Beachbody as an opportunity to fulfill God’s plan, (re)inhabit the home, and encounter the Divine through their uplines. References: Haithman, D. (2020, May 18). Beachbody sees gains. Retrieved from https://labusinessjournal.com/news/2020/may/18/beachbody-sees-gains/. Hammer, B. (2021, January 25). How to fix women's jobs during the covid-19 pandemic. Sullivan, K. R., & Delaney, H. (2017). A femininity that ‘giveth and taketh away’: The prosperity gospel and postfeminism in the neoliberal economy. Human Relations, 70(7), 836-859.

Pengaruh Kualitas Pelayanan terhadap Kepuasan Pelanggan serta dampaknya pada Word of Mouth Jasa Pengurusan Nenkin di CV Speed Nenkin

Tujuan pada penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui pengaruh kualitas pelayanan terhadap kepuasan pelanggan serta dampaknya pada word of mouth pada CV Speed Nenkin. Metode yang digunakan adalah survey dengan pendekatan kuantitatif. Tipe analisis yang digunakan adalah analisis deskriptif dan analisis verifikatif. Penelitian ini dilakukan pada pelanggan speed nenkin dengan jumlah sampel sebanyak 226 responden. Metode nonprobability sampling dengan teknik purposive sampling adalah teknik sampling yang digunakan pada penelitian ini. Analisis verifikatif menggunakan path analysis. Temuan pada Penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa kualitas pelayanan berpengaruh langsung dengan positif dan signifikan terhadap kepuasan pelanggan. Kualitas pelayanan berpengaruh langsung dengan positif dan signifikan terhadap word of mouth. Kepuasan pelanggan berpengaruh langsung dengan positif dan signifikan terhadap word of mouth. Berdasarkan hasil temuan bahwa perusahaan yang memberikan pelayanan yang terbaik dan berkualitas akan langsung terasa manfaatnya oleh pelanggan sehingga pelanggan dapat menilai bahwa pelayanan yang diberikan memberikan kepuasan dan pelanggan secara alami akan melakukan komunikasi word of mouth. Terdapat perbedaan pada penelitian ini dan sebelumnya, yaitu pada objek penelitian yang berfokus pada industri multilevel marketing dan jasa pengiriman sedangkan penelitian ini berfokus pada jasa pengurusan nenkin.

filtering sinyal menggunakan bandpass filter

Multilevel Marketing (MLM) business visualizes a business network into a hierarchical tree consisting of relationships between nodes. In its application, a branch is generated from each node which when visualized becomes a tree with a height that continues to increase and will consume space which will have an impact in terms of less than optimal data access. In order for the tree structure to be formed from relationships between nodes with hierarchically ordered data, and to streamline time in the search and data access process, an MLM business process information system was built by applying the Binary Tree algorithm. The concept in the Binary tree itself is a hierarchical organization of several nodes, where each node has no more than 2. Nodes that are under a node are called children of the node. A node above a node is called the parent of that node. A binary search tree is a search in a binary tree by tracing nodes that are placed in the left branch if the information content sent is smaller than the information at the root, or tracing the right branch if the information content is stated to be greater than the root. The goal is to implement sorted data into the information system in accordance with the hierarchy of the MLM system and in this way data retrieval can be done quickly and easily.

ORGANIZATION OF REFINED PRODUCTS SALES IN KAZAKHSTAN

The article presents the main theoretical and methodological approaches to the sale of refined products. The views of scientists and economists on the sales of refined products and its categories are considered. Organization schemes of petroleum products sales on domestic and world markets, multilevel marketing system, routes of product movement (logistics chain of product movement) have been substantiated. The main documents (futures), risk insurance (hedging), planning the organization of sales of petroleum products, the impact of marketing programs on the choice of sales channel are considered. The article presents the formation of sales channels for petroleum products in vertically integrated oil companies. The tasks for timely provision of consumers with petroleum products have been clarified. The optimal choice of efficient schemes for cargo transportation of refined products, logistics schemes for their transportation and temporary storage, and rationality of transit forms of delivery of oil products to consumers are indicated. The main goals of achieving optimal sales systems for petroleum products by vertically integrated oil companies are revealed. The possibility of having special divisions for the sale and export of refined products by large oil companies is justified. The analysis of indicators of demand and supply of petrochemical products on the world markets with the author's positions on the current situation on the world oil markets in connection with the coronavirus pandemic. The analysis and assessment of production and consumption of basic petroleum products on the domestic markets of Kazakhstan is given. As a separate example, the analysis of diesel fuel consumption by regions and sectors of the national economy of Kazakhstan was carried out.

Chemical Supplementing

This chapter, Chemical Supplementing, presents ethnographies of young people who use a variety of supplements in order to optimize their health. In the Philippines, boys take multivitamins with the hope of increasing their height, reflecting the importance of stature in their society, and young professionals take expensive supplements to improve their stamina for their demanding distribution jobs in a multilevel marketing company. In fitness centers, young women use proteins and fortified shakes to achieve an idealized, lean, and muscular body. In health and vitamin stores in Amsterdam, growing numbers of young people are buying, sharing, and promoting their personal concoctions of proteins and vitamins. These supplementing practices stem from young people’s various needs: to respond to the demands of service sector labor, to recover from the strain of night work, to indulge in the pleasure of weekend raves, and to manage growing concerns about environmental toxins. By zooming in on supplementing practices of these different groups of young people, we get a clearer understanding of their shared sense of vulnerability, and of the need for better regulation of the supplements industry.

Opportunity

This chapter establishes the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company of Indiana as a “race company,” one organized by and for the benefit of African Americans. It was the institutional manifestation of Walker’s moral imagination and philanthropic commitments. Its structure and operations blended Walker’s commercial and philanthropic goals to provide the gift of opportunity to black women through employment despite the larger constraints of low-wage, exclusionary Jim Crow labor markets. Thousands of black women became financially independent, cared for their families, and gave back to their communities in the quest for freedom through their employment in the company as sales agents, beauty culturists, or salon owners. This approach was grounded in black self-help ideology and the health and hygiene work of black clubwomen. The chapter explains that the Walker Company effectively became a third “C” that Walker added to the church and the club as platforms for black women’s racial uplift activities. The chapter addresses critiques of the company related to women’s standards of beauty and multilevel marketing business strategies. It explores Walker’s business and familial-like relationship with key trusted adviser Freeman B. Ransom, a black corporate attorney, whom she employed to help run the company. He gave organization to her vision, ran daily operations, and administered her philanthropic giving while she traveled promoting the company. The chapter reveals their partnership in operating the company for both commercial gain and philanthropic uplift as the hub for implementing her gospel of giving.

Chinese New Age milieu and the emergence of homo sentimentalis in the People’s Republic

The accelerating speed of economic, social, and cultural reforms in the past three decades in mainland China has created an atmosphere of moral uncertainty that encouraged many people to search for happiness by turning inwards. Shen xin ling (身心灵, translated as Body-Heart-Soul) fever refers to the growing interest among Chinese urbanites in various seminars that creatively transform the guiding principles of the Euro-American New Age movement, incorporating China into transnational networks of alternative spiritualities. This anthropological investigation into the shen xin ling milieu locates its genealogy in the progression of several post-Maoist self-cultivation fevers, most notably the recent ‘psycho-boom’. It focuses on Chinese New Agers’ practices of emotional release, conceptualizing them as ‘psy-venting’ spaces where the emotions that could result in resentment at those who perpetuate structural inequalities are released, dispersed, and channelled back to the individual. In so doing, these affective flows become carriers for Chinese state discourses related to therapeutic governing. This process is characterized by tensions as shen xin ling practitioners find themselves positioned at the intersections of state-endorsed discourses on consumerism, entrepreneurialism, the re-traditionalization of gender roles, and anxieties over multilevel marketing schemes and accusations of ‘evil cult’.