Business ethics issue : An investigation into the ethics of agents of a multi-level marketing company - A case of Oriflame Ho Chi Minh city
Abstract
Multi-level marketing (MLM) is no longer a strange concept to everyone
nowadays especially in a few decades recently. It creates a totally new method of doing
business compared to traditional ones with the replacement of intermediaries such as
retailers, wholesalers, distributors by agents, who are individuals working independently
to perform as selling arm of producers and connect producers to final customers.
However, a lot of debate about this type of business is still happening every day because
there have been numerous fraud MLM companies and fraud agents using this method to
trick people, which leads to a bad reputation to MLM. When MLM came to Vietnam, this
reputation is even more serious, causing an intense prejudice against MLM.
The ethical problem related to MLM compensation models and agents is the
common topic for many researchers. There have been many researches about MLM in
Vietnam market. However, most of them focus on the MLM compensation structure to
discuss about ethics of MLM companies. In order to provide another aspect of ethical
MLM, this study is conducted with the emphasis on ethics of MLM agents in Oriflame
Ho Chi Minh City, in terms of their perceptions, attitudes, purposes/ motivations and
ethical behaviors.
This dissertation employed case study approach and qualitative research
method. The data collection was conducted with 15 Oriflame agents by in-depth
interview. These agents were asked some ―open-ended‖ questions to express their
thoughts, feelings. Their responses were recorded and transcribed for analyzing. Each
item of ethics was analyzed and in the end, the profile of Oriflame agents was created.
The profile illustrated the three categories of Oriflame agents: Amateur, Semiprofessional and Professional, with different characteristics of ethics for each group. This
profile is also the main purpose of this research, so that people can understand more
deeply about MLM agents and their ethics to judge them in the right way.
Key words: multi-level marketing (MLM), ethics, Oriflame agents, agent profile