다단계 조직의 문제점과 개선방안에 관한 연구

Abstract

South Korea is the country with multi-level marketing companies whose number and size are the world’s third largest. The number of domestic multi-level marketing companies whose information was released by Fair Trade Commission in 2018 is 130, and their total revenue is 5.2208 trillion won, which increased by 3.7 percent year on year. The total amount of support allowance is 1.7817 trillion won. During the worldwide recession and stagnant market economy, multi-level marketing companies are showing a firm and steady increase. However, contrary to this growth of multi-level marketing companies, domestic and foreign companies with an illegal pyramid system often cause damage cases leading to negative views of multi- level marketing companies, and it still remains a problem. Despite the negative awareness on multi-level marketing organizations, they continue to thrive and the reason for it is their profitability through downward expandability that these organizations have. The purpose of this study is to pay attention to the effect of economic boom and growth that multi-level marketing organizations have, analyze the problems of domestic multi-level marketing organizations and find a solution. Literature review was selected as the research method, and Korean, Japanese and the US multi-level marketing organizations were compared and analyzed. In addition, the problems of multi-level marketing organizations were categorized into structural, legal and technical problems and the solutions for them were sought. The structural problem arises from the multi-level marketing organization assuming the identical form of illegal pyramid organization, and correct uses of the term through newspaper and news and provision of a new term for multi-level marketing are necessary, but they do not seem to be the fundamental solution. The technical problem is related to artificial intelligence and jobs, and it is necessary to consider the position of not worker but consumer and re-establish all the standards regarding the service. The legal problem is the most fundamental one, and what matters the most is to clearly separate the illegal pyramid-selling organization from the multi-level marketing organization. Besides the US and Japan held up as an example in this study, other countries are making efforts to eradicate the illegal pyramid marketing based on various laws. South Korea does not have clearly-defined regulations on multi-level and illegal pyramid marketing organizations and regulates illegal pyramid marketing organizations through speculative salespeople’s expansion sales activities based on door-to-door sales act, but the meaning is ambiguous and institutional improvement regarding this is required.