Stewart Brodie

Independent Contractors in Direct Selling: Self-Employed but Missing from Official Records

Document Summary) Direct selling has been defined as the sale of a consumer product or service in a face-toface manner away from a fixed retail outlet. These sales are conducted by self employed independent contractors, without employees, usually part-time and typically female. Relatively little is known of the self-employed without employees but they are typically regarded as micro small businesses passing through the early stages of business growth. As evidence for this alternative and segmented view of the small business population, whole classes of employees, with no real aspirations to become entrepreneurs, have been witnessed making the transition from employment to self-employment, often continuing to work partly or wholly for their former employers.

Differences in Turnover Predictors between Multilevel and Single Level Direct Selling Organizations

Turnover among its salespeople is a significant issue for direct selling firms because attrition impacts the size and continuity of revenue generation by a firms sales force. While turnover rates in direct selling are high overall, turnover rates and intentions to quit differ significantly between multilevel (ML) and single level (SL) forms of direct selling organizations. This study examines whether specific demographic and behavioural/attitudinal characteristics of direct salespeople correspond to differences in turnover between ML and SL salespeople. For many demographic variables there are significant differences between ML and SL salespeople, but none of these differences correspond to differences in quitting intentions. There are also significant differences between ML and SL salespeople on the behavioural and attitudinal variables studied. Analysis revealed that the relationship between some of these variables and quitting intentions differed substantially between ML and SL salespeople. These variables included job satisfaction, organizational commitment, perceived image of direct selling in the marketplace, and the importance of the job characteristics of work rewards and career growth. Specific managerial implications follow from these findings.

Outsourcing salesforces via self-employment: the case of direct selling in the UK

The past two decades have witnessed little, if any, growth in the numbers of small firms with employees in the UK. At the same time, a substantial growth in the numbers of self‐employed without employees as a component of the UK national labour force has been witnessed. The current article reports on a recent study into direct selling that accounts for around 500,000 “independent contractors” at any one time, albeit, in this case, operating often as part of an invisible economy, though linked with household‐name direct selling companies. With the advent of more large companies, such as the recently privatised utilities, using direct selling as a distribution format, there is a strong case for achieving a wider understanding of the dynamics of this system.