On Incentive Systems Based on Multi-Level Marketing of Virtual Goods

A generic model for the monetary flow in multi-level marketing schemes for virtual goods, so called incentive management systems, is introduced and analysed. It is shown that such schemes can in principle be fair, and it is argued that they can be viably realised if the value of the distributed good is positive. It is shown how the monetary incentive a buyer receives through the scheme can be precisely determined in a large scope by dynamical forward pricing.