St.

Mary’s University

Department of computer science

Project Title: Multi level marketing system

Research method in Computer Science Group Assignment

By

Kibu Nesibu-----------------------------RAD/1353/2012

Andamlak Tesfaye ---------------------RCD/3150/2013

Nathnael Worku-------------------------RCD/3182/2013

Submitted to: Demea Herpha

August 23, 2023

Addis Ababa

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction (Background/Overview)..................................................................................................1
2. Problem Statement...............................................................................................................................1
3. General Objective................................................................................................................................2
4. Specific Objective...............................................................................................................................2
5. Motivation...........................................................................................................................................2
6. Significance.........................................................................................................................................2
7. Scope and Limitation...........................................................................................................................4
8. Feasibility............................................................................................................................................4
9. Prior Work (Literature Review)...........................................................................................................5
10. Methodology....................................................................................................................................6
10.1 System Development Methodologies..........................................................................................6
10.2 Tools................................................................................................................................................6
10.2.1 Hardware......................................................................................................................................6
10.2.2 Software.......................................................................................................................................7
11. Deliverables.....................................................................................................................................7
12. Resources (Tools)............................................................................................................................8
13. Milestones.......................................................................................................................................8
Reference.....................................................................................................................................................9

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1. Introduction (Background/Overview)
Multi-level marketing refers to a business model which constitutes a network of people earning
directly from sales commission depending on the quantity they sell. It’s a flexible approach that
allows people to work online. It evolved as a strategy that adds salespersons to a marketing
network. Our Multi level marketing system is a business model that relies on individuals
harnessing their personal networks to grow a business or sell a product like commodities. Multi-
level marketing (MLM) is a distribution-based marketing network that includes direct sales and a
downline of distributors. MLM organizations sell real products or services to the customer
directly that distributors and the customers believe in. Existing members of an MLM company
sell and promote the products to a community of potential customers. They are often expected to
also bring in new members to join the ever-expanding sales levels of the company. Within the
structure of a multilevel marketing company, there is always a hierarchy of roles, or levels, that
can be ascended through successful sales or recruitment, which are tied to rewards and
promotions for the associates.

2. Problem Statement
Market dynamics in Conflict-affected Areas of Ethiopia: Markets in all part of Ethiopia continue
to operate below normal with the escalation of the blocking off road network due to insecurity
and thereby affecting supply chain – as such, retail prices of cooking oil and detergent have
increased by more than 100 percent in the last three years due to limited supply to the market.
Significant price increase has been observed on industrial processed food commodities and
detergent in the country market such as cooking oil and detergents which are very high in the
conflict-affected area markets when compared with some other part of markets.

These are caused by unusual doubling of prices due to illegal hiding and unreasonable hoarding
of cooking oil and detergents on the side of irresponsible and illegal retailors. These illegal
traders and retailors who don’t consider profits as adequate make a whooping profit margin of
more than 100 percent. The doubling of prices in cooking oil and detergents, as well as the
security situation in Ethiopia has caused major supply disruption and the current inflation [3].

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Therefore, for sure , our project MLM will solve the problem of unreasonable increasing of price
by eliminating these irresponsible and illegal traders by creating our own downline distributors
and give them advanced training how to reach these commodities to the customer. Our MLM
system which holds the downline distributors that will address these products to market as the
people want and do the product available to everywhere.

3. General Objective

The general objective of our project is to develop the website that has downline distributors
(creating chain of distributors) to address these products to market as the people want and do the
product available to everywhere directly from the retailer as well as being a member to the chain
and create their own chain and has their affiliated customer.

4. Specific Objective

MLM is going to create downlines / members of legal and responsible traders to address the
commodities to customer on any time which decreases the deficiency of these commodities by
avoiding illegal hiding and unreasonable hoarding of cooking oil and detergents.

5. Motivation

Our motivation to develop MLM is that, people in Ethiopia are affected by inflation and we all
are complaining the cost of living. We have to minimize illegal inflation. We choose this project
topic because it takes the priority of living standard and the outcome will be well creating
affiliation with the enthusiastic distributors and providing these products as the customer want it
in appropriate price and immediate time.

6. Significance

From our proposed project, all people will be beneficial, in that, every customer will be equally
accommodated by the salesperson and there will be fixed and balanced price for these
commodities in all part of the market.

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The salesperson will be also beneficial because the salesperson will get commission from their
down line up to not more than 5 downline members. Multi level marketing organizations market
and sell their product directly and don’t make use of any well-defined channel of distribution.

The responsibility to sell the products is transferred to the non-employed individuals (the
participants) who get the commission every time they make a sale. This model involves
participants to use the selling philosophy of marketing. The main focus is on recruiting and
selling as much as you can to earn more commission. No relationships are built. People may
even trick you to buy the products or to join them. Dependency on direct sales helps the
organization to rely less on advertising as personalized contact have more convincing power than
advertisements.

Fig 1 Example for MLM chain

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7. Scope and Limitation

Our project Multi level marketing will cover only on cooking oil and detergents to all the capital
cities of the regions and on Addis Ababa. The project has limitation because it do not include
products other than cooking oil and detergents because these commodities take priority.

8. Feasibility

MLM will be technically, legally and economically feasible in most circumstances in the market.
Undoubtedly, cooking oil and detergents are available, the problem is on the traders and illegal
distributers. Today there are many complains from the people as well as from the government
and the government takes some action to minimize these illegal traders. If we start developing
these MLM website and create legal affiliation with the customer, these complains will be
eliminated and the customer will get these commodities in timely and cost effective manner. In
the last two and three years the price of these commodities doubly increased and we will balance
the economy of the customer and the manufacturer. Here the educated and legal distributors will
take control of the market and customer will get better value .

Technically Our website will be fully developed and these website will be implemented and
really provide service successfully using current available technology. We have the technical
resources to convert the idea into a fully functional and profitable working system. Economically
MLM will not manufacture commodities, rather having legal and direct relation with the
manufacturer and also having direct relation with our customer to provide these commodities to
them. There are enthusiastic people and traders who wants to provide these commodities in legal
way to their customer, we will have members like them to do with and also to develop our
economy.

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9. Prior Work (Literature Review)
Multi level marketing has helped people all over the world achieve financial independence―and
it can help you do the same. As a profession, Multi level marketing invites all people, regardless
of gender, experience, education, or financial status, to jump on board and build a satisfying and
potentially lucrative business. If you want to improve your current financial situation and are
ready to become your own boss, then networking marketing is the way to go. [2]

SameedAsgharKhan stated that in multilevel marketing, every customer is also the marketer as
he becomes the seller of the product at the same time while add more customer through his or her
chain he would get percentage of profit. So as the customer increases the seller also increases
and a chain reaction would start of multilevel marketing have been discussed. [4]

Tyre Troy A. (June 2015) stated Multi level marketing is a dynamic business model that is
growing in popularity on the domestic front as well as the global arena. Multi level marketing
has foundational establishment in 1945. Multi level marketing is the most popular form of direct
selling. Multi level marketing is face-to-face retail selling away from a physical retail site with a
tiered compensation plan. Multi level marketing organizations compensate personnel outside the
company, network marketers, to market and sell the products or services direct to consumers.

Network marketers are independent small business owners that recruit, train, and manage their
sales force. Multi level marketing is open to everyone and has low capital investment, high
margins, no designated territories, and minimal interference from the company. Operating and
monitoring cost are minimal. Multi level marketing appears to be a viable business architecture
for subsidizing income and to some a formidable full time business. [5]

On these Literatures, they are trying to develop themselves mostly and some also try tried to do
illegal action using MLM. In our project, we will provide prior commodities for the customer
and balance the living standard of the people.

Thermomix® TM6®: they create easy, delicious meals. Explore more than 60,000 recipes
developed by their test kitchens and chefs around the world. With built-in Wi-Fi, customer can
get integrated grocery delivery service, up-to-the-minute recipes, and real-time product updates.
[6]

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10. Methodology
Relevant legislation will be done as there will present some rules when there is illegal benefit

from the customer. Due to the criticisms and misconceptions about fraud in multi-level
marketing strategies, it is first important to add authenticity to the business.

Creating legal relationship and have an agreement with the manufacturer to acquire products
directly from manufacturers and distribute them through traditional or digital marketing methods.
This removes production costs, and the distributor can focus entirely on marketing and sales.

10.1 System Development Methodologies

System Development Methodology refers to the framework that used to structure, plan and
control the process of developing an information system.

There are several types of software development approach for our project we decide to use
waterfall approach because it is breakdown of project activity into linear sequential phase, where
each phase depends on the deliverable of the previous one and corresponds to a specialization of
tasks.

10.2 Tools
For developing our system, we need the following tools:-

10.2.1 Hardware
The hardware requirements are:-

Computer: to code and design the project and to develop the website of Multi level marketing
System.

External hard disk: for having a backup our file

Flash disk: to transferring data

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10.2.2 Software
 Window 10 or window 11
 MySQL- is one of the world’s most popular open-source database management system. It
is a free open source database and perform various form of data manipulation database
administration. MySQL is chosen for the development of this system because its
advanced features like Data security, High performance, easy to learn and use and for
each member with their chain of salesperson will be registered in one database.
 Java- It is popular high-level, class-based object oriented programming language which
runs on a variety of platforms, such as Windows, Mac OS, and the various .Java is used
to develop numerous types of software applications like Mobile apps, Web apps, Desktop
apps and it is a general-purpose programming language which is preferable to develop
our website where our downlines will control and check number of .
 HTML - stands for (Hyper Text Markup Language) is widely used language on the web
to create web pages and web applications. It is the most basic building block of the Web.
 CSS-(Cascading Style-Sheet) is to describe a web page's appearance/presentation. It is
the language we use to style an HTML document. It can control the layout of multiple
web pages all at once. It describes how HTML elements are to be displayed on screen,
paper, or in other media.
 JavaScript: Is used to describe functionality/behavior. JavaScript is the world's most
popular programming language. It is most well-known as the scripting language for Web
pages.

11. Deliverables

From our project, it is expected that we will develop Multi level marketing System to create our
chain/team who are responsible for their action to deliver the commodities to the customer
directly from the manufacturer. Our members can have their own members and can widen their
team to deliver the commodities.

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12. Resources (Tools)

We will use hardware instruments like computer and all computer instruments, USB flash and
software setups like, Java, html, css(react), JavaScript to develop our software. We also need free
spaces to develop our website freely and we need internet access to get some information online.

we need three computers to develop the website and test individually then group testing. We also
have other professionals to test our project and get advice from them like instructors in our
campus.

13. Milestones

Date Milestone
June.week1, 2024 Start designing the project and show for the instructor
June. week 2- week 4, Develop full website and show for the instructor
2024
Jully,week1,2024 Test full website with the instructor and try to improve
Jully,week2,2024 Test the project by other professionals and end developing the
project
Jully,week3,2024 Give Presentation
September, 2024 Start creating legal agreement with the manufacturer
November, 2024 Start creating members/salesperson try to begin the distribution as
first stage
February, 2025 Fully deliver the commodities to all capital cities

Reference

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[1] A. STANDARD, 9 MARCH 2022. [Online]. Available: https://addisstandard.com/analysis-
as-rising-prices-inflation-grips-ethiopia-government-to-open-up-retail-sector-to-foreign-
companies/. [Accessed 13 August 2023].

[2] J. P. Hayes, "amazon," 10 January 20001. [Online]. Available:

https://www.amazon.com/Network-Marketing-Dummies-Zig-Ziglar/dp/0764552929.
[Accessed 23 August 2023].

[3] [Online].

[4] T. T. A., "indianjournals.com," 3 June 2015. [Online]. Available:

https://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:aca&volume=5&issue=2&article=006.
[Accessed 13 August 2023].

[5] "thermomix," [Online]. Available: https://www.thermomix.com/. [Accessed 17 August

2023].

[6] W. Team, 2023. [Online]. Available:

https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/network-marketing/#h-network-marketing-explained.
[Accessed 13 August 2023].

[7] D. Doeing, 7 August 2023. [Online]. Available: https://learn.g2.com/network-marketing.

[Accessed 13 August 2023].

[8] SameedAsgharKhan. [Online]. Available:

https://www.scribd.com/document/256737233/LItReview-on-Network-Marketing.
[Accessed 13 August 2023].

[9] T. T. A., 3 June 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?

target=ijor:aca&volume=5&issue=2&article=006. [Accessed 13 August 2023].

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