A Strategic Thinking on Multi-Level Business Development in Wellness Foods ()
1. Introduction
More people believe that taking wellness foods will benefitthe outcome of self-care in recent years. The market size of wellness foods are noticeably increased for the past decade in the globe. Facing the critical challenge —the aging problem; people are willing to pay more to improve their health. The economy growth gives a warmbed for wellness food business incubation. Many wellness food companies rely on the multi-level direct-selling model for business development. To make this work, there are six key elements in viral marketing strategy: 1) gives away products or services; 2) provides for effortless transfer to others; 3) scales easily from small to very large; 4) exploits common motivations and behaviors; 5) utilizes existing communication networks; and 6) takes advantage of others’ resources [1]. However, such a viral marketing approach—a strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence—assumed that each business developer possesses the same personal attributes and capabilities on the market penetration. Currently, the common business development practice in wellness food companies is to 1) offer trial products to the consumers; 2) introduce a simple business proposal to the potential entrants; 3) inspire the resellers to expanding their social networks deeper; 4) implicate the potential outcomes to health by applying medical theories and findings; and 5)
motivate the potential consumers to purchase the products by sharing the successful stories in improving health and the career development as well. These wellness food companies are continuously investing lots of efforts and time in intensive training on product knowledge transferring and the morality inspiration, because they believe that the resellers can meet the sales goals if they possess sufficient product knowledge and the abilities in developing their social networks. Many resellers cannot survive in this business model requiring high-motivation. The frustration comes from many facets. In generally speaking; the resellers’ income depends on the sales bonus, because many multi-level marketing companies do not pay the base salary to the resellers, if the product cannot push to the market quickly, the income will be unsteady. On the other hand, their personal attributes limit the business development speed; only few people are good at all business required aspects, such as communicating to others, explaining the product benefits, and with broad medical information. Apparently, the current practice might have founded on a wrong assumption —the resellers are uniform as selling machines—observed from the high mortality rate of newbies in this business. Multi-level marketing is a powerful means for both marketers and recipients; through such a viral marketing approach, the marketers push the products to the people they can influence; and the recipients get more customer intimacy and service from the marketers too. In wellness food business, the consumers need more than just receiving the products but the sharing the self-care knowledge also. Therefore, the success of this business model hinges upon the recognition of the strong need for influencers to be viewed as knowledgeable helpers in the social network rather than as agents of the marketer [2].
This paper articulates the reasons behind and how to effectively improve the multi-level business development in wellness food industries.
2. Research Design
Different multi-level marketing wellness food companies have their unique products and bonus plans. They are also facing the various phases in business development. Furthermore, most resellers in this business have multiple roles at the same time; they are the product consumers, make tactics in business development, and are the mentors and recruiters of newbies. To disclose the obstacles of multi-level marketing business and infer useful strategies to these companies requires deeper investigation from different perspectives.
The qualitative research is a type of scientific research. In general terms, scientific research consists of an investigation that: 1) seeks answers to a question; 2) systematically uses a predefined set of procedures to answer the question; 3) collects evidence; 4) produces findings that were not determined in advance; and 5) produces findings that are applicable beyond the immediate boundaries of the study. The qualitative research is especially effective in obtaining culturally specific information about the values, opinions, behaviors, and social contexts of particular populations. The strength of qualitative research is instability to provide complex textual descriptions of how people experience given research issue. It provides information about the “human” side of an issue—that is, the often contradictory behaviors, beliefs, opinions, emotions, and relationships of individuals. Qualitative methods are also effective in identifying intangible factors, such as social norms, socioeconomic status, gender roles, ethnicity, and religion, whose role in the research issue may not be readily apparent. When used along with quantitativemethods, qualitative research can help us interpret and better understand the complex reality of a given situation and the implications of quantitative data. Although findings from qualitative data can often be extended to people with characteristics similar to those in the study population, gaining a rich and complex understanding of a specific social context or phenomenon typically takes precedence over eliciting data that can be generalized to other geographical areas or populations. In this sense, the quailtative research differs lightly from scientific research in general [3].
The objectives of data analysis in qualitative research should be able to disclose the following aspects: 1) what are the core meanings about the analysis, do these data reveal better understanding or imply a theory behind the phenomenon? 2) What are the most helpful viewpoints that answer the research questions? and 3) how to present the research findings [4].The system dynamics (SD) approach with its causal philosophy and purpose of gaining deep insight into the working of a system places heavy emphasis on “looking within the system”; it contains mainly six problem-solving steps throughout the methodology operates, such as: 1) problem identification and definition, 2) system conceptualization, model formulation, 3) simulation and validation of the model, 4) policy analysis and improvement, policy implementation [5].
Figure 1 illustrated the research process. This research process takes advantage of two powerful methods in deep disclosing phenomenon, qualitative research and system dynamics. In system dynamics, a causally-closed system is one in which the causes creating the behavior of inter-