The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Channel Performance of MLM Sales Leaders: Perspective from Downlines in Malaysia

Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) businesses have been treated as MLM sales leaders’ own businesses and they need to develop and manage by their own, especially creating new business opportunities to expand their social networks through recruiting more new downlines. Yarnell (1999) stated that the entrepreneur will be honored in the Twenty-First Century as the corporate executive was the hero of the Twentieth Century. The Twenty-FirstCentury entrepreneur will seek the balance of lifestyle freedom, personal growth, and self-fulfillment. The situation reflected on MLM sales leaders and the successors for who seek for financial independence. An organization with individuals who prefer innovative activities, who are not risk averse, and who are proactive by exhibiting entrepreneurial orientation are in a more favorable position to compete in a rapidly changing business climate (Davis, Bell, G. Payne, & Kreiser, 2010). In such circumstance, the value of entrepreneurship among MLM sales leaders is essential to improve the channel performance of Multi-Level Marketing Organizations (MLMO). The basic of the study was to analyze the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on channel performance of selected MLMO in Malaysia. The study approached the entrepreneurship theories, particularly on the three dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation as the main theories and models of the study. The study used descriptive survey design and it adopted quantitative research method to test the hypothesis using inferential statistics. The data was collected from the selected downlines through the application of cluster sampling among 64 registered MLMO in Malaysia. There were 320 sets of well-structured questionnaires mailed to the selected downlines for the data collection and the final inputs were analyzed by the help of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The study practically contributed the insights towards delivering the importance of entrepreneurial orientation on channel performance of MLM sales leaders in Malaysia.