I live and work in Utah, which, for not completely clear to me reasons, is home to a lot of MLMs. Nu Skin, Usana, Xango, doTerra, Young Living, Jamberry (and those are the ones I can just name off the top of my head) are all headquartered here.
For an area that in many ways is punching above its weight class in terms of tech companies, I occasionally have nagging (possibly unfounded?) concerns in the back of my head that one day a lot of these companies will be a hindrance on the continued growth here. I know some people already view Utah mostly as the home of MLMs and I don't know if that does much for attracting forward looking tech investment. That said, these companies have brought a ton of jobs and has certainly helped fund the growth in the area and I have worked with and met a lot of people who seem pretty decent.
While many of these companies aren't "evil", I think the MLM is probably one of the most insidious dark design patterns around. I think the best way of how these companies primarily operate is like the Cassette/CD clubs of a few years past. A small fee gets you a decent amount of "up front value" (Join the club for $30 and get 30% off your first order!) with the expectation that you won't order anything else or forget to cancel the yearly membership fee. This is, of course, all made worse by the fact that is often friends and family who are peddling the high margin health and dietary products with questionable efficacy. Like I said, I don't know if I can call it an outright scam (I know a few people who really like there shakes and supplements and swear by them), but it does drive strange incentives...
The reason I had heard is because Mormon's make great door-to-door salesmen. Many of the men have spent a year or two of door-to-door proselyting (attempting to convert). So they're used to selling to strangers and also being rejected. I'm not sure how true this is, but it seems plausible.
I see a lot of those Mormon young men here in Germany on their mission. There are usually two of them, dresses well and behaving very politely. Although they directly contact people on the street, I never have the feeling that anyone is annoyed by them. Therefore I could well imagine that they are great sales men.
Honestly, being stopped on the street and talked to isn't so bad if they're not trying to sell you something. The only reason I ever go out is to talk to people and almost everyone (myself included) is afraid to do it. I've come to enjoy the short conversations with the Jehovah's witnesses, the Hindus and so on even though I'll probably never believe most of what they're saying.
Nah, they aren't driving the mlm. Their skills are leveraged more for the door to door giants like Vivent and most every other door to door sales company you can think of. And on the darker side, Utah also houses a great deal of very legally dubious boiler room sales floors. You will find that almost every single "I make $900 at home" that originated from the US will lead you to a high pressure sales floor in Utah.
The mlm seems to be the stay at home moms and maybe a mix of others that are able to leverage their church network.
Another likely factor related to the high Mormon population is the correspondingly high stay-at-home mother population, for whom MLM looks like a good opportunity to have a career while still being at home for their families most of the time.
To really make the case they aren't evil you have to pretend that those running these businesses are unaware of their own business plan and buy into their own marketing, while they carefully craft the marketing and contracts to break the law only so much as to remain profitable while paying settlements and fines.
It's a ridiculous idea. No one accidentally tunes a dark pattern so perfectly.
For an area that in many ways is punching above its weight class in terms of tech companies, I occasionally have nagging (possibly unfounded?) concerns in the back of my head that one day a lot of these companies will be a hindrance on the continued growth here. I know some people already view Utah mostly as the home of MLMs and I don't know if that does much for attracting forward looking tech investment. That said, these companies have brought a ton of jobs and has certainly helped fund the growth in the area and I have worked with and met a lot of people who seem pretty decent.
While many of these companies aren't "evil", I think the MLM is probably one of the most insidious dark design patterns around. I think the best way of how these companies primarily operate is like the Cassette/CD clubs of a few years past. A small fee gets you a decent amount of "up front value" (Join the club for $30 and get 30% off your first order!) with the expectation that you won't order anything else or forget to cancel the yearly membership fee. This is, of course, all made worse by the fact that is often friends and family who are peddling the high margin health and dietary products with questionable efficacy. Like I said, I don't know if I can call it an outright scam (I know a few people who really like there shakes and supplements and swear by them), but it does drive strange incentives...