The term network marketing is used in two ways. In popular usage it is a synonym for multi-level marketing and often mistakenly considered the same as a pyramid scheme.

Within marketing it is used to describe a marketing paradigm that stresses the interconnectedness of market actors and transactions. It can be seen as the application of systems thinking to marketing. Other marketing paradigms see the discipline as consisting primarily of dyadic relationships (ie., one buyer and one seller). Network marketing wishes to overcome this limitation by looking at transactions and relationships from the viewpoint of all those involved. This perspective originated in industrial marketing, also called b-2-b marketing, where multiple contact points are typical. It is not uncommon, for example, to have several decision makers in a company's "buying centre". Likewise, the marketer can be organized into a "selling team". With multiple actors on each side of the transaction, a complex network is created. This is further complicated by corollary actors like information gatekeepers, influencers, advertisers, and intermediaries. This network can expand over time as more people get involved. This approach sees marketing as a system of social networks where the relations between each of the links must be understood, including potential feedback loops, while at the same time, the system must be comprehended as a whole.