MULTILEVEL

adjective Also written multi-level (Business World) In business jargon: operating on a number of levels simultaneously. Used especially in multilevel marketing or multilevel sales: a selling technique involving direct contact with the customer through a network of independent distributors. Etymology: So named because the system makes use of sellers at a number of different levels in the organization, each buyer taking on the responsibility of finding further sellers as well as trying to sell the product. History and Usage: Multilevel marketing originated in the US in the early seventies as a name for a development of the type of marketing operation that is sometimes also called direct sales or pyramid selling (an earlier term with more critical connotations, dating from the sixties)--the technique best exemplified by Tupperware parties and home shopping representatives. Multilevel seemed to become one of the buzzwords of the sales world in the eighties, but the system has been criticized because it tends to exploit those in the middle of the pyramid, putting great pressure on them to find more sales staff. Merchant Associates said it was working for a California-based organisation selling health products on a multi-level (or pyramid) system. Daily Telegraph 4 Feb. 1987, p. 22 To avoid problems, he says, USA Today no longer takes ads for multilevel sales organizations, where you make your biggest money not by selling products but by bringing new sales people into the game. Chicago Tribune 17 Oct. 1988, section 4, p. 7