The effect of multi-level (Network) marketing system employees perceptions towards employer brand on their sales performance

Multi-level marketing (MLM) has become an important business model in Türkiye and worldwide in recent years. This model is based on selling products directly to consumers and at the same time recruiting new distributors. MLM is gaining popularity, especially among young people, and is seen as a source of additional income for many people. However, debates on the ethical and legal dimensions of this system continue. One of the main features of the multi-level marketing system is that participants earn income by both selling products and finding new members. This situation leads to the MLM system being considered as a two-way market. It has been reported that the total sales of companies operating in the direct sales sector that have adopted the multi-level marketing method reached 179,300 Billion Dollars in 2000. 43% of these sales took place in the Asian Continent, followed by the Americas with 36% and the European Continent with 20%. The top 5 countries with the largest direct sales economies are America with 22%, China with 11%, Germany and Korea with 10%, and Japan with 9%, respectively. It was reported that the number of independent sales entrepreneurs working in the direct sales sector reached 125 million in 2020. This situation draws attention to the multi-level marketing system. In the first part of the thesis, the concept of direct marketing, its historical development process, its difference from other marketing methods and its advantages and disadvantages are discussed. In the second part of the thesis, conceptual information is given about the concept of multi-level marketing, which is a method of direct marketing, its historical development process, advantages and disadvantages, and the operation of multi-level marketing. In the third chapter of the thesis, the concepts of employer brand and sales performance are expressed. In the fourth chapter of the thesis, hypotheses regarding the direction in which perceptions towards the employer brand affect sales performance were put forward, hypothesis testing was conducted with structural equation modeling on the data set, and it was concluded that perceptions towards the employer brand positively affected sales performance.