Abstract

Direct selling has been an important space in the commercialization of consumption goods and has exhibited in the last years substantial growth in sales revenues and number of salespeople involved at world level. Today, we can still identify an important bridge between this selling method and the selling and communication through the Internet. Nevertheless, direct selling has not deserved a great attention from the academy. In spite of the antiquity of the concept still some gaps are verified in its understanding and operacionalization. The present thesis studies the factors which influence the consumers’ satisfaction and his acceptance of direct selling, contributing to the improvement of the knowledge of this distribution method based on the Portuguese context.

We propose a conceptual model which identifies and analyses the relationships between the determinants of consumers’ acceptance and his satisfaction towards direct selling. For that we derive and test our research hypothesis. We defend that: "Direct selling is a distribution form which has advantages for the consumer in comparison with other sale forms away from fixed retail location such as distance selling."

We have Identified four dimensions of independent variables (purchase characteristics, consumers’ characteristics, consumers’ experience and perceived risk) and two dimensions of dependent variables (satisfaction and acceptance of direct selling). On that purpose, and after the literature review, we designed a two-phase empiric research methodology:

- Exploratory phase, including interviews with a sample of Direct Selling Organizations (DSO’s) managers and interviews with salespersons and clients of the same DSO’s.

- Quantitative phase, based on a questionnaire applied to the Portuguese adult consumers.

Most of the operational hypothesis and the gauging of the empiric model are confirmed, and we identified three groups of consumers (clusters). The obtained empiric evidences are pertinent for direct selling companies, which are looking forward to improve the understanding and the forecast of the consumers’ behaviours on purchase. Although applied to the Portuguese context, the present study suggests a model that identifies the determinants which will lead the consumer to accept direct selling to buy a specific product, and the reasons that can take him to be satisfied in relation to that choice. It was concluded that the main determinant of acceptance and satisfaction with direct selling is the previous experience of the consumer.

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