In Merchants of Doubt (Bloomsbury, 2010), Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway detail how scientists were recruited to sow doubt about the problems caused by different industries, including the links between tobacco smoking and cancer, and the links between fossil fuels and global warming. The book tracks how money was channeled from the tobacco and fossil fuel industries to the scientists through non-profits and think tanks. In some cases the same scientists were used to spread misinformation about different industries. They also developed strategies to undermine scientific consensus and taught them to other scientists.
Now two business school professors have published a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Marketing Management that demonstrates that the multilevel marketing (MLM) industry has systematically been engaging in similar tactics (C. Groß & W. W. Keep (10 Nov 2025): The law and consumer harm in multi-level marketing: a review, Journal of Marketing Management, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2025.2578617 ). The authors, Claudia Groß, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, and William Keep, of the College of New Jersey, undertook an exhaustive and meticulous review of the academic marketing and legal literature on MLM, as well as a probing analysis of the financial links between the authors of marketing articles on MLM and the MLM industry. What they found should be extremely embarrassing to many of the academics whose work they studied, as well as exposing at least one academic marketing journal as the incubator of much of the disinformation and misinformation that has infected the field of MLM studies.
Keep and Groß found that the “marketing literature often frames and studies MLM in overly narrow ways,” noting that MLM is frequently portrayed as simply another retail channel of products, overlooking its problematic aspects, such as widespread deceptive earnings claims, misleading product representations, and the financial losses experienced by most participants. (p.2). They identified three serious problems with the quality of the marketing literature: “a widespread underrepresentation and misrepresentation of legal concerns and consumer harm, an often overly simplistic or positive framing of the MLM model, and significant influence from authors affiliated with the industry” (p.3).
The first step in their analysis was a review of the legal literature from 1973 to 2024. They identified eight core legal issues that arose repeatedly with MLM: product misrepresentations, earnings misrepresentations, illegal pyramid schemes , saturation, illegal lotteries, MLM as an investment security, MLM distributors characterized as independent contractors, and foreign risks (p.4).
They then identified and analyzed 68 marketing articles over the same period of time in academic journals concerning MLM to determine whether and how these legal and consumer harm issues were addressed. They found “a significant gap” between the core legal issues and the portrayal of MLM in the marketing literature. There was “widespread underrepresentation and misrepresentation of legal concerns and consumer harm and an often overly simplistic or positive framing of the MLM model.” (p.6).
What caused this gap? One factor is the influence of the MLM industry, including the Direct Selling Educational Foundation (DSEF), a non-profit created by the Direct Selling Association (DSA), which serves as the lobbying organization for the MLM industry. Keep and Groß found that 24 of 107 contributing authors (22%), who collectively accounted for 40 of the 68 articles they analyzed (59%), had ties with the industry. (p.6). The industry ties included academics who served as DSEF Fellows, on the DSEF Board of Directors, Executive Council, and/or Academic Advisory Council; were recognized by the DSEF Circle of Honour or Educator of the Year; or received DSEF grants. (p.6).
Keep and Groß also revealed that a quarter of all of the marketing articles on MLM were published in one journal – the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management (JPSSM) (p.16). The authors report that in 1982, the editor of the JPSSM recognized the DSEF as a “new supporter” of the journal, and in 1999 the outgoing editor recognized that (in the editor’s words) the DSEF “has maintained its gracious munificence to aid the editorial operations of JPSSM.” (p.16). It appears that the JPSSM has been the house organ of the DSEF for over 40 years.
How has the DSEF influenced the academic literature on MLM marketing? Groß and Keep observe that a majority of the marketing literature attempts to legitimize the MLM model, by treating it as just another form of doing business and ignoring the serious consumer harm and adverse legal issues caused by MLM plans. As they state, “marketing researchers often overlooked the more complex, potentially harmful aspects of the MLM business model” (p.15).
The authors pay particular attention to the uncritical adoption in the marketing literature of the industry’s self-characterization as “direct selling,” which it defines as “face-to-face selling away from a fixed retail location.” (p. 15). This “retail-focused” definition omits key aspects of the MLM business model, “such as recruiting, the multiple roles of participants (as buyers, consumers, sellers, and recruiters), and the legal and consumer harm issues associated with them.” (p. 15). Significantly, the authors note that “no marketing article has explicitly explored whether the incentives of upline and downline participants are properly aligned – a fundamental aspect of market exchanges. Upline participants benefit from downline purchase volumes even as many downline members fail to qualify for earnings, and high turnover ensures that a significant proportion of those recruited become inactive. This oversight critically neglects the intrinsic self-interest embedded in perpetuating endless recruitment and purchasing, a dynamic that is well documented in the aforementioned legal concerns” (p.15). This is a crucial insight: since the compensation plan is the central organizing feature of MLM, to ignore it leaves the elephant in the room.
What is the consequence of allowing the MLM industry to shape the academic analysis of its characteristics? The authors provide numerous examples of questionable or downright deceptive research.
For instance, they refer to a survey of 1,700 corporate officers from DSA member companies and comment that “[u]nsurprisingly the results of this dataset – based entirely on the self-reported views of CEOs and senior executives about their own company and the industry at large – are overwhelmingly positive.” (p.17). Another survey conducted of a ‘sample of current direct sellers’ found ‘the more the direct sellers agreed that their direct selling experience improved skill levels in general, the greater they perceived their performance in non-direct selling jobs’. Keep and Groß observe that “by exclusively focusing on current participants, the study neglects the aforementioned well-documented evidence of financial and social harm participants report after having left the industry.” (p.17).
Another article purported to draw a parallel between MLM participants purchasing products to meet the requirements of the MLM compensation plan with employee discount purchases in other industries. Groß and Keep criticize the authors for conflating “a voluntary benefit unconnected to performance measures with the key role of MLM purchases in MLMs’ compensation structure.” This comparison ignores the “fundamentals of the MLM model”, including “the self-interest of upline participants who motivate their downline to invest in products to generate upline rewards despite being unable to consume or retail the products purchased.” (p.21).
In my view, Keep and Gross have done a tremendous service to regulators, policy-makers and anyone interested in consumer protection, by exposing a decades-long effort by the MLM industry to hide the fundamental truth about its “business model” – that the vast majority of participants lose their investments of money, time and energy. MLM is not a business model, not simply an alternative means of product distribution, but a method of deceiving consumers and seekers of business opportunities. It is shameful how numerous academics – presumably experts on marketing – have been willing accomplices in this effort.