Building a sustainable competitive advantage for multi-level marketing (MLM) firms: an empirical investigation of contributing factors

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to investigate the factors contributing to sustainable competitive advantage for multi-level marketing (MLM) firms in Malaysia. The selected variables in this study are company image, product innovation, leadership, distributor rewards system and distributor training system. Research design, data, and methodology - Quantitative research method is employed with collected sample size of 398 respondents using judgmental sampling technique. Normality and reliability test were performed in the first stage utilizing SPSS 22 and Confirmatory Factory Analysis (CFA) and variance analysis were obtained in the subsequent stage, following up with the overall fit of the measurement model, Structural Equation Model (SEM) using AMOS 22 with maximum likelihood estimation to assess the internal consistency, convergent validity and discriminant validity. Results - The research findings show that company image, leadership, distributor rewards system and distributor training system were supported and are factors affecting the sustainable competitive advantage of MLM companies in Malaysia. However, in this study, product innovation was not supported but this result does not depict that it is trivial and inconsequential in maintain sustainable advantage. Conclusion - Companies can build sustainable competitive advantage by focusing on these contributing factors. Several other comments and implications were brought to light and discussed in the paper.