"I have always detested Rainbow and Kirby vacuum cleaner companies because
they always preyed on the poorest of poor, it seemed to me. "
don't know about rainbow, but kirby is the most expensive vacuum cleaner out there, and there's no way it can be marketed to poor people...the sales force aims at the middle and upper end, exclusively...the things cost way over a thousand bucks...
re amway style direct and pyramid selling:
"What struck me about it was not that much the idea of "selling out your
friendships," but the religious zeal that you had to have to succeed - you had to devote your entire life to the idea of selling their stuff and moving up the pyramid ladder (according to their "training materials."). I understand there are many similar pyramid schemes in the US, such as Tupperware "parties", May Kay cosmetics etc."
indeed, and these frequently offer not only a religious kind of zeal among the sellers, but a kind of community, often exclusively female, as in tupperware and mary kay, and thus a form of women's group for working class folk, among the buyers, not available anywhere else but in church,...
unfortunately, most commies and socialists and social change activists are in study groups and chat lists online and don’t tend to go door to door, the way these sales people, and certain religious types, do, to make contact with non-professional, working class people ...
studies(?) of this kind of selling should be done, since they are uniquely old school in that the marketing is done person to person, and the pitch involves - allegedly , at least - removing the "middle man", thus the old "direct sales" label...this,while offering the dream-drug of making big buckolas and sharing the whole deal with friends, who are not seen as used, but included in the wonderful scheme for success...
lots of gullibility and naiveté, but also a human contact that is denied in just about every other aspect of marketing among - overwhelmingly - working class people...
middle and upper middle class ignorant dreamers have other drugs to use, but among those with little or no formal education, direct sales is often the only way to - seemingly - latch onto the fulfillment of the american dream...
which is not clearly revealed as a nightmare until you get to grad school...
fs