5 ms·

I wonder why MLM's are so rampant in the mountain west. I know "mormons" and "sales experience from missionary work" but the analysis can go deeper. From person

I wonder why MLM's are so rampant in the mountain west. I know "mormons" and "sales experience from missionary work" but the analysis can go deeper. From personal, anecdotal experience, a lot of these MLM people I've seen are moms. Could it be that that area is so sales heavy that stay-at-home moms want to run their own thing so they get into MLM on the side?

Spooky23 7y ago
Mormons tend run the companies and seed the initial demand. Moms with built in communities are big markets. Wherever you have a big military, police/fire/prison presence you'll see these all over. Also certain church communities, certain freelancer type industries, (yoga contractors, photographers) etc.
- thephyber 7y ago
  I've noticed that "military, police/fire/prison" families and some church communities like to "support our own" and buy from "locally owned businesses". I think MLMs allow people to buy what they think is a locally owned business that they believe will return dividends to their own community. Sadly the dividends that MLMs return are mostly negative (debt, friction of social bonds, etc).
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    They also have shift work husbands and are more likely to have a female spouse at home when kids are young. Pension systems make it very difficult to get out of the job after a few years. If you go to a police or fire station and ask, easily 30% of the wives are nurses, as it’s a job with super flexible schedules. MLM gets pitched as a way to make some extra dollars.
  - gexla 7y ago
    > I think MLMs allow people to buy what they think is a locally owned business that they believe will return dividends to their own community. This would be the sane selling point for people who aren't susceptible to cult following. I was tricked into going to one of these meetings and at first I thought this is what it was. I was envisioning a sort of Amazon meets Costco scheme where you can get greater discounts with the more bulk that you buy. That's not keeping money in the community, but at least it's saving money in a community buying pool. The first speaker at the meeting even got into a small business presentation which had nothing to do with MLM. I thought he did great. Then came the preacher, and everything fell into place. This is some sort of scam. I would have been fine with the thing if it would have been a group buying thing where you save money AND stuff gets delivered to your door. I never did get far enough to see if there would have been any savings though.
- jacurtis 7y ago
  I was raised Mormon since birth. I recently recovered from it a few years ago. But I can tell you that MLMs are INSANELY POPULAR among Mormons (especially the female crowd). I could go into detail about why, but it basically boils down to a few key factors: - Mormons have huge community networks. - Mormons are gullible (this will feel offensive to current Mormons, but unfortunately it is true, the entire relgion basically requires you to believe in very crazy stories that are easily proven false if you question them even a tiny bit). And once a leader has been built up to be a "trusted leader" they are taught to follow them without question. - Mormon women are mostly homemakers (the church largely enforces or "encourages" this), who are looking for ways to support their family or themselves. Work from home schemes that require little work are very attractive to them. - Mormons have huge families with generally only 1 primary earner. So they often need the extra money. Get rich quick schemes tend to do well within Mormon communities for this reason. - The Mormon religion is organized nearly identical to an MLM, with layers of free labor. The big worldwide Mormon "rallys" (called "General Conference") is almost identical to a rally for an MLM. If you have been to both, it is hard to tell them apart. I have been involved in MLMs (through other Mormons in my area) before and the line between MLM and Mormonism is pretty blurry. Mormonism is basically an MLM selling you eternal life (just requires 100% obedience to their laws, and 10% of all pre-tax income you make during your lifetime). So for Mormons who have grown up that way, the MLM atmosphere is very comfortable and familiar. They trust it more than the standard corporate structure. MLMs roll through Mormon communities like wildfire for those reasons. I have been personally invited to more MLMs as a Mormon than most people reading this even know existed. It is a pillar of Mormon culture.
tel 7y ago
It might also be a side effect of how maps in the mountain west and mid west tend to visually overemphasize the impact of those regions. They have low population density and large area, so they can be more sensitive to smaller target populations while also "popping" visually.
Aloha 7y ago
I wondered the same thing - why do so many MLN's seem to start in the Mormon Corridor[1]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Corridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Corridor
- imglorp 7y ago
  I've wondered that too. One would think that religious people would have some aversion to harming others. Harm to the people you recruit is basically what direct sales amounts to. Another question is, are religious people more likely to fall for this scheme? It seems Western religion almost requires habitual suspension of critical thought of all claims.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    > Harm to the people you recruit is basically what direct sales amounts to. The trick is to make the seller believe one is helping the customer instead of hurting. dōTerra is an excellent example of this, encouraging its marks - sorry, "representatives" - to "spread awareness" of the "benefits" of its overpriced snake oils - sorry, "essential oils". Like, don't get me wrong, I buy essential oils. I even work for a company that sells them. The difference is that I buy them because I spritz my wool dryer balls with them and they make my clothes smell good, not because I think it'll cure my migraines or fix the bald spot on my head. I also don't try to run a pyramid scheme with them.
jbob2000 7y ago
These companies are active in areas of low education. They aren't present in coastal cities because that tends to be where smart, educated people congregate. Checkout this map of Red vs. Blue states: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/var/plain/storage/images/media/commentary_images/kondik/kondik_map_1_december_6_2018/1375267-1-eng-US/kondik_map_1_december_6_2018.png http://www.rasmussenreports.com/var/plain/storage/images/med... There is a slight correlation with Red states and high MLM activity. Hmmm....
- jandrese 7y ago
  The article lists a lot of MLM companies that started on the coasts and worked inward, including pretty much every snake-oil "wellness" product supplier.
  - thephyber 7y ago
    > that started on the coasts 9 of the 13 companies didn't start on "the coasts".
    - jandrese 7y ago
      By my count 6 of the 13 started on the coasts: ASEA, ATOMY, Jeunesse, Kannaway, LulaRoe, World Global Network If you count Texas's Gulf Coast the figure would be higher. For many of the rest it's the Mormon effect. Neighbors want to help neighbors and that ends up involving them buying into MLM snake-oil pyramids.
- sct202 7y ago
  I think it depends on the products, like Rodan & Fields seems to be popular specifically in higher income / educated demographics compared to other MLMs, like I've seen people who seem like they should know better get roped in to RF but they'd turn their noses up to Herbalife.
- didgeoridoo 7y ago
  This map shows MA, MD, and VT as “red”. These are three of the most reliable Democrat-voting states in the country. Something is wrong with your map.
yellowapple 7y ago
Having been raised Mormon, it ain't surprising in the slightest that so many of these are concentrated in and around Utah/Idaho. There are a multitude of factors at play here: - Like you mentioned, door-to-door proselytism translates well to door-to-door sales. - Mormon communities tend to be very tight-knit and immediately trusting of fellow Mormons, so once you have a critical mass of LDS followers selling your "inverted funnel", it's gonna spread like wildfire. - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints actively discourages any sort of rational individual thought, instead encouraging its members to "doubt your doubts" and follow the Church without question. This ends up serving MLM marketers well. The Church is America's longest-running and most-successful MLM scheme; to your average Mormon, this is all very "normal". - The Church does its best to railroad women into being faithful wives to their husbands and mothers to their children, which (as you touched on) translates to emphasizing stay-at-home parenting over holding a full-time job. This keeps Mormon women busy for a few years, but once those kids are in school (and even moreso when those kids grow up and move out), there ain't a whole lot to do at home. Mormon women - being human beings with free wills, contrary to what the Church would want us to believe - are thus inclined to take up part-time jobs, especially ones that they can do without compromising the Mormon ideal of women-as-domestic-servants-to-their-husbands. MLM schemes tick all the boxes, or at least so their marketing claims. - Middle America already has a strong predisposition toward distrusting modern medicine/science, so appeals to "traditional" medicine tend to be somewhat more effective.
- kaonwarb 7y ago
  Your first and second points are strong hypotheses. In my opinion the third in particular needs substantiation. It's quite common for external religiosity to be negatively correlated with higher education (a reasonable proxy for "rational individual thought," which is otherwise difficult to measure). Neutral evidence points towards the opposite for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - unique in having a strong positive correlation wherein the more highly educated, the more religiously active a member is, at least in the United States [1]. Members are also more likely to have a college education than non-members (61% vs. 50%) in the U.S. as a whole, again not supporting an aversion to rational thought [2]. Neither of those disproves your assertion, but they do provide evidence to the contrary. [1] https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-education-equal-less-religion/ https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-edu... [2] https://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in-the-us/ https://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in...
mandevil 7y ago
Mormons Losing Money. (Also seen: Mom's Losing Money.)

Spooky23 7y ago

Mormons tend run the companies and seed the initial demand. Moms with built in communities are big markets. Wherever you have a big military, police/fire/prison presence you'll see these all over. Also certain church communities, certain freelancer type industries, (yoga contractors, photographers) etc.

thephyber 7y ago
I've noticed that "military, police/fire/prison" families and some church communities like to "support our own" and buy from "locally owned businesses". I think MLMs allow people to buy what they think is a locally owned business that they believe will return dividends to their own community. Sadly the dividends that MLMs return are mostly negative (debt, friction of social bonds, etc).
- Spooky23 7y ago
  They also have shift work husbands and are more likely to have a female spouse at home when kids are young. Pension systems make it very difficult to get out of the job after a few years. If you go to a police or fire station and ask, easily 30% of the wives are nurses, as it’s a job with super flexible schedules. MLM gets pitched as a way to make some extra dollars.
- gexla 7y ago
  > I think MLMs allow people to buy what they think is a locally owned business that they believe will return dividends to their own community. This would be the sane selling point for people who aren't susceptible to cult following. I was tricked into going to one of these meetings and at first I thought this is what it was. I was envisioning a sort of Amazon meets Costco scheme where you can get greater discounts with the more bulk that you buy. That's not keeping money in the community, but at least it's saving money in a community buying pool. The first speaker at the meeting even got into a small business presentation which had nothing to do with MLM. I thought he did great. Then came the preacher, and everything fell into place. This is some sort of scam. I would have been fine with the thing if it would have been a group buying thing where you save money AND stuff gets delivered to your door. I never did get far enough to see if there would have been any savings though.
jacurtis 7y ago
I was raised Mormon since birth. I recently recovered from it a few years ago. But I can tell you that MLMs are INSANELY POPULAR among Mormons (especially the female crowd). I could go into detail about why, but it basically boils down to a few key factors: - Mormons have huge community networks. - Mormons are gullible (this will feel offensive to current Mormons, but unfortunately it is true, the entire relgion basically requires you to believe in very crazy stories that are easily proven false if you question them even a tiny bit). And once a leader has been built up to be a "trusted leader" they are taught to follow them without question. - Mormon women are mostly homemakers (the church largely enforces or "encourages" this), who are looking for ways to support their family or themselves. Work from home schemes that require little work are very attractive to them. - Mormons have huge families with generally only 1 primary earner. So they often need the extra money. Get rich quick schemes tend to do well within Mormon communities for this reason. - The Mormon religion is organized nearly identical to an MLM, with layers of free labor. The big worldwide Mormon "rallys" (called "General Conference") is almost identical to a rally for an MLM. If you have been to both, it is hard to tell them apart. I have been involved in MLMs (through other Mormons in my area) before and the line between MLM and Mormonism is pretty blurry. Mormonism is basically an MLM selling you eternal life (just requires 100% obedience to their laws, and 10% of all pre-tax income you make during your lifetime). So for Mormons who have grown up that way, the MLM atmosphere is very comfortable and familiar. They trust it more than the standard corporate structure. MLMs roll through Mormon communities like wildfire for those reasons. I have been personally invited to more MLMs as a Mormon than most people reading this even know existed. It is a pillar of Mormon culture.

tel 7y ago

It might also be a side effect of how maps in the mountain west and mid west tend to visually overemphasize the impact of those regions. They have low population density and large area, so they can be more sensitive to smaller target populations while also "popping" visually.

Aloha 7y ago

I wondered the same thing - why do so many MLN's seem to start in the Mormon Corridor[1]. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Corridor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Corridor

imglorp 7y ago
I've wondered that too. One would think that religious people would have some aversion to harming others. Harm to the people you recruit is basically what direct sales amounts to. Another question is, are religious people more likely to fall for this scheme? It seems Western religion almost requires habitual suspension of critical thought of all claims.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > Harm to the people you recruit is basically what direct sales amounts to. The trick is to make the seller believe one is helping the customer instead of hurting. dōTerra is an excellent example of this, encouraging its marks - sorry, "representatives" - to "spread awareness" of the "benefits" of its overpriced snake oils - sorry, "essential oils". Like, don't get me wrong, I buy essential oils. I even work for a company that sells them. The difference is that I buy them because I spritz my wool dryer balls with them and they make my clothes smell good, not because I think it'll cure my migraines or fix the bald spot on my head. I also don't try to run a pyramid scheme with them.

jbob2000 7y ago

These companies are active in areas of low education. They aren't present in coastal cities because that tends to be where smart, educated people congregate. Checkout this map of Red vs. Blue states: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/var/plain/storage/images/media/commentary_images/kondik/kondik_map_1_december_6_2018/1375267-1-eng-US/kondik_map_1_december_6_2018.png http://www.rasmussenreports.com/var/plain/storage/images/med... There is a slight correlation with Red states and high MLM activity. Hmmm....

jandrese 7y ago
The article lists a lot of MLM companies that started on the coasts and worked inward, including pretty much every snake-oil "wellness" product supplier.
- thephyber 7y ago
  > that started on the coasts 9 of the 13 companies didn't start on "the coasts".
  - jandrese 7y ago
    By my count 6 of the 13 started on the coasts: ASEA, ATOMY, Jeunesse, Kannaway, LulaRoe, World Global Network If you count Texas's Gulf Coast the figure would be higher. For many of the rest it's the Mormon effect. Neighbors want to help neighbors and that ends up involving them buying into MLM snake-oil pyramids.
sct202 7y ago
I think it depends on the products, like Rodan & Fields seems to be popular specifically in higher income / educated demographics compared to other MLMs, like I've seen people who seem like they should know better get roped in to RF but they'd turn their noses up to Herbalife.
didgeoridoo 7y ago
This map shows MA, MD, and VT as “red”. These are three of the most reliable Democrat-voting states in the country. Something is wrong with your map.

yellowapple 7y ago

Having been raised Mormon, it ain't surprising in the slightest that so many of these are concentrated in and around Utah/Idaho. There are a multitude of factors at play here: - Like you mentioned, door-to-door proselytism translates well to door-to-door sales. - Mormon communities tend to be very tight-knit and immediately trusting of fellow Mormons, so once you have a critical mass of LDS followers selling your "inverted funnel", it's gonna spread like wildfire. - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints actively discourages any sort of rational individual thought, instead encouraging its members to "doubt your doubts" and follow the Church without question. This ends up serving MLM marketers well. The Church is America's longest-running and most-successful MLM scheme; to your average Mormon, this is all very "normal". - The Church does its best to railroad women into being faithful wives to their husbands and mothers to their children, which (as you touched on) translates to emphasizing stay-at-home parenting over holding a full-time job. This keeps Mormon women busy for a few years, but once those kids are in school (and even moreso when those kids grow up and move out), there ain't a whole lot to do at home. Mormon women - being human beings with free wills, contrary to what the Church would want us to believe - are thus inclined to take up part-time jobs, especially ones that they can do without compromising the Mormon ideal of women-as-domestic-servants-to-their-husbands. MLM schemes tick all the boxes, or at least so their marketing claims. - Middle America already has a strong predisposition toward distrusting modern medicine/science, so appeals to "traditional" medicine tend to be somewhat more effective.

kaonwarb 7y ago
Your first and second points are strong hypotheses. In my opinion the third in particular needs substantiation. It's quite common for external religiosity to be negatively correlated with higher education (a reasonable proxy for "rational individual thought," which is otherwise difficult to measure). Neutral evidence points towards the opposite for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - unique in having a strong positive correlation wherein the more highly educated, the more religiously active a member is, at least in the United States [1]. Members are also more likely to have a college education than non-members (61% vs. 50%) in the U.S. as a whole, again not supporting an aversion to rational thought [2]. Neither of those disproves your assertion, but they do provide evidence to the contrary. [1] https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-education-equal-less-religion/ https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-edu... [2] https://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in-the-us/ https://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in...

mandevil 7y ago

Mormons Losing Money. (Also seen: Mom's Losing Money.)