Despite playing an important role in many economies, Multilevel Marketing (MLM) firms and their sales agents have been understudied in the marketing literature. The agents receive compensation that is 100% commission based and can recruit and develop a network of sub-agents. The commission rates...

Platform recognition in the form of non-financial incentives such as badges, status, and ranks are commonly employed to incentivize user contributions. We study one such incentive, "status", in the context of a user-generated content platform, specifically a third-party online restaurant-review...