Talk:Amway

Type "Amway Motivational Organization" into Google, if you can be bothered. AxelBoldt

my apologies, I should have been clearer - that is a name exclusive to critics of Amway, and should be mentioned as such. Someone doing that search will not find answers from Amway or pro-Amway folks as they don't use that term.

There are, aligned with Quixtar, groups like ina.net that fit this description and do the training and motivation of Quixtar distributors, who distribute Amway and other products through a common distribution arm.

So what's your point again? AxelBoldt

these groups are called Independent Marketing Companies or something else by Quixter, ina.net is one of these.

It's a fundamental issue with direct multi-level marketing organizations that they can't control the behavior of frontline distributors, probably no more than Arafat can control the timing of suicide bombers. Same top-down versus bottom-up behavior influence debate... the Amway Corp does try to make certain things standard, e.g. no "door to door selling", and they succeed in general, but they have only a few blunt instruments with which to do so.

This article needs to be updated, and the "AMOs" need to be documented - I don't doubt that somewhere somehow someone used this name for them, but they serve a legitimate role in multi-level marketing, although they may overstep it and become bad religions...

Oh God. Now 24 starts to preach MLM in addition to "embodied mind" and "ecoregion". AxelBoldt

ecologists preach "ecoregion", psychologists preach "embodied mind" - I merely report. As to your issue with MLM, it's seems to me to be an issue with capitalism. Which I think I gave very neutral treatment to. You want an economic system driven by human desire and advertising, you're going to see a lot of people conned, often. That may or may not be the fault of the organization that provides the products and the attracive payoff scheme.

a neutral fact is that Amway has created more millionaires than any other company in the world, Microsoft is only second. Both companies are hated but it's a combination of envy *and* perhaps some abuses of market position that account for it. MLM schemes come and go, Amway/Quixtar has stayed. Of course not everyone succeeds in it. But the millionaires aren't complaining.

The FTC ruling was allegedly initiated by Proctor and Gamble, who competes with Amway for sales of packaged consumer goods. P&G were concerned about continued erosion of their market share by Amway and businesses with a similar structure to Amway's.

Who has alleged this when and where?

Rather than contest the charges, which could have resulted in distributors suffering financially because of a court injunction prenting business during a trial, Amway paid the fine. Amway later successfully appealed the fine but did not appeal the conviction -- again to avoid causing suffering to its network of distributors.

How could they appeal the conviction when they had pleaded guilty in the first place? Are you saying that they first paid the fine, then successfully appealed the fine and got the money back? How much did they pay in the end? AxelBoldt 03:42 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)