The labor market has long included individuals seeking nonemployee, alternative work arrangements. Now, alternative work arrangements such as freelancing, independent contracting, and temporary contracts have entered the lexicon through the following terminology: the gig economy, the sharing economy, the YouEconomy, agile workforce, and contingent workers. There are currently an estimated 18.6 million independent contractors engaged in direct selling. This article reports the first attempt to empirically investigate and document both the economic and social impacts of direct selling in the U.S. Our findings suggest that direct selling has a consequential impact on the U.S. economy and that the direct selling experience fosters a variety of skills that benefit professional activities as well as the personal lives of millions of independent workers.

Internal consumption in the direct selling industry has been at the heart of many debates over the past couple of decades. In this article, we contend that internal consumption is a widespread practice at all levels of the distribution channel and not something limited to the direct selling or the multilevel marketing (MLM) retail arena. While government regulators in some countries attempt to use this practice in MLM as prima facie evidence of illegal pyramiding, the results presented here provide evidence of the widespread use of internal consumption in all aspects of retailing. Thus, to attribute internal consumption as a negative aspect solely within the direct selling marketplace shows a misplaced understanding with regard to personal use, discounts, and company recruiting efforts. At the same time, however, our research shows that discounted purchasing of product for personal use likely brings little value to the company since it does not appear to result in increased job satisfaction or organizational loyalty from either the affected employees or the customer base.