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It is generally recognized that consumer cooperatives are at a disadvantage when raising capital as compared to conventional capitalist firms. The purpose of this paper is to explore a method for consumer cooperatives to issue transferable membership shares as financial securities and raise non-redeemable equity. The author examines if such a method can strengthen the financial viability of consumer cooperatives in the market economy.

The author first explain the mechanism by using diagrams of the circular flow of factors of production and the product. The author then developed a simple formal model and compare the amount of equity capital raised by a capitalist firm and a consumer cooperative.

The author found that the amount of equity that a consumer cooperative can raise by issuing shares of membership is greater than the amount of equity that a capitalist firm can raise by issuing shares of stock.

More research effort is required to apply the theory discussed in this paper for practical use.

Consumer cooperatives have many good features that conventional capitalist firms do not have. However, the scale and scope of consumer cooperatives have been quite limited partly because of the problem of finance. The method presented in this paper is expected to improve the financial viability of consumer cooperatives and promotes their activities in the market economy.

This paper regards the membership of a consumer cooperative as a kind of financial security and as a tool for procuring capital for investment. As far as the author knows, the present paper is the first one that presents such a concept.

This paper aims to study how activists involved in consumer-initiated cooperatives, in a specific context, challenge the practices of the neoliberal system and develop counter-practices that are ingrained with their values. It aims to access the transformative capacity and inclusiveness of consumer-initiated cooperatives and the role played by prefigurative practices in changing the status quo. Three practices – defetishization of agricultural commodities, surplus generation and distribution, prefiguration – that enable the inclusion of those groups who are marginalized in the food production and consumption nexus by neoliberal policies are identified.

The findings of this paper were developed from 23 unstructured interviews, participant observation and analysis of the social media accounts of five consumer-initiated cooperatives located in different districts of Istanbul and which are involved in a collective response to the neoliberal policies.

The study discusses that, in a specific context, political events and economic policies can be a catalyst for the initiation of alternative consumer-initiated cooperatives. The findings indicate that these organizations can develop and articulate prefigurative practices that are influential in transforming the prevailing capitalist food provisioning system to be more inclusive.

The findings offer an alternative view to the dominant capitalist logic and advance the concept of how the economic sphere can be re-politicized and how the persevering notion of financial performance is resolved by invoking values of inclusion, solidarity, responsibility and sharing. The findings are based on the study of five cases in a specific context during a specific period.

This paper focuses on cooperatives owned and governed by activist consumers and presents results concerning their underlying practices for creating a food provisioning system that is inclusive and aiming for social justice and equality. Similarly, it provides evidence of how local political and economic conditions influence the appropriation and development of these practices – commodity defetishization, surplus distribution and prefiguration.

The purpose is to evaluate the performance of consumers' cooperatives in the United States over the last 100 years. This evaluation is based on an overlooked series of surveys undertaken by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics between 1920 and 1950. Where possible, the series are brought up to date.

The surveys did not follow a single consistent organization. Therefore, the observations require rearrangement so that a single meaningful design is achieved.

In a number of instances, consumers' cooperatives have not merely survived but thrived. Indeed, some of their original and continuing methods of operation have been copied and adopted by firms that are not cooperatives.

The series constructed are original and singular. The author knows of no such comparable data.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate an innovation concerning a short food supply chain (SFSC) created by a newly established producers’ cooperative in Greece that sells fresh milk to consumers via automatic vending machines; the consumers’ response toward this innovation; and the financial performance of the cooperative.

The case study focused on consumer’s attitudes toward the cooperative’s fresh milk sold by automatic vending machines and the cooperative’s financial performance. A structured questionnaire was answered by 912 consumers in Thessaloniki during 2015 and analyzed using the IBM SPSS STATISTICS program, version 22. Additionally, the cooperative’s financial data (2012–2015) were used in order to calculate its financial performance.

The authors identified five unique consumer categories according to consumer motive, of which social motives are considered in the sample as the most important. The cooperative’s financial indicators are satisfying, especially taking into consideration the severe economic crisis in Greece over the past years.

It is difficult to evaluate Thesgala as there exists no similar producer cooperative in SFSCs in Greece. The cooperative is recently established and therefore financial indicators represent a short time period.

Producers, especially small ones in remote or peri-urban areas, can be involved in a SFCS and reach consumers via their cooperatives (or by founding a cooperative). Producer’s cooperatives can include SFSCs in their strategic planning in order to stimulate changes in the food system for the benefit of both producers and consumers.

Policy makers should orient the appropriate policy measures to support SFSCs for the benefit of society as a whole.

The research investigates an SFSC that was created as a producer’s initiative (not a consumer’s) via their cooperative. It advances knowledge of how to initiate changes in the food system.

Member-owned business organizations, such as cooperatives, are engaged in various economic activities that touch our everyday lives. Sitajakhala Dugdha Utpadak Samabai Samiti Limited (Sitajakhala Dairy Producers Cooperative Society Limited) is a successful cooperative society in the northeastern region of India. The purpose of this case study is to illustrate how the cooperative manages its production and supply chain of milk and milk products and highlights several issues that the cooperative encountered in the recent past and how those issues were managed. This case also illustrates how an agribusiness cooperative has been growing over the years, including expansion of business and the creation of a brand image, as well as benefiting its members and their communities.

The authors used a case study approach where they went for in-person interviews of Sitajakhala's executive members and office staff; in addition, the authors were given access to Sitajakhala's marketing and financial records as well as its annual reports and vision documents.

Sitajakhala Co-op provides a platform where individual dairy farmers (most of who are small farmers and many of them are illiterate) can unite to bargain for higher prices for their milk. Due to its member-oriented business strategy, Sitajakhala Co-op has been growing well with active support of its members. Consistent quality control and marked improvements in labeling, bottling and packaging of milk and milk products has helped the cooperative to establish itself as a leader in dairy products supplier in Assam among bulk buyers as well as individual consumers. Sitajakhala cooperative also provides dairy farming related services to its members for free of charge to improve milk production and quality. One of the shortcomings of the cooperative is underutilization of its modern milk processing plant which needs to be addressed by the management in earnest.

This case study is based on information from one dairy cooperative in Assam, India; thus, the findings of this case may not translate into other dairy cooperatives in India or elsewhere. Nonetheless, cooperative practitioners may find the findings useful from a management perspective.

Sitajakhala Co-op management was keenly aware of the non-dairy related needs of the community it serves. Some of such services include free medical ambulance service for its members, supporting secondary education through providing merit and need-based scholarships and funding physical improvements to a local high school and a local college. In addition, the cooperative regularly provides funding to local sports and cultural events and local social institutions which have positive impact on the larger community. Sitajakhala cooperative has been providing employment to the local youth in the Morigaon area and plans on continuing to do so.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case study focusing on the management and operations of a dairy cooperative in the northeastern part of India. Knowledge gained from such study is expected to benefit not only Sitajakhala cooperative but also other dairy cooperatives in a similar situation. This case study will also benefit senior undergraduate and/or graduate students specializing in agricultural economics/agribusiness and can also be used for executive training for the management of academic institutions and food companies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine different quality schemes and to determine how these could be combined by Agricultural Cooperatives into a brand development strategy designed not only to differentiate their products but also to enhance them with higher value added in the competitive landscape of the food industry.

This paper will first address how brands have enclosed quality signs and even more, how consumers respond to it. Then, it will examine to what extent Greek Agricultural Cooperatives have developed brands for their products and whether they have used quality systems in their activities. Thus, the starting point in the paper's argument is that Agricultural Cooperatives have been slow to develop brands while consumers have been displaying a positive attitude towards these products.

This work suggests a solution to overcome the difficulties and drawbacks associated with the notion “cooperative product” and to compare its similarities with a collective brand, which has been previously proposed as a brand development strategy for the Agricultural Cooperatives.

The development of a Quality System especially designed for agricultural cooperatives’ products and, in combination with product certification, can be used as a part of their brand strategy.

Agricultural cooperatives could build a brand development strategy based on quality systems, Total Quality Management elements and hence attain the benefits associated with their implementation.

Literature on nontraditional firms has focused on behavioral differences with for-profit firms. Less attention has been given to the variations in behavior among nontraditional firms. This chapter examines differences across three types of Uruguayan nonprofit health care organizations.

This chapter draws on a unique dataset of Uruguayan health care organizations during the period 1982–1990, as well as interviews with doctors working in the three types of nonprofits during spring 2010. We use a simple OLS regression to identify differences in average behavior, and differences in reaction to a regulatory change.

The chapter shows that structure of stake holding and governance significantly affect behavior, even where many behaviors are highly regulated.

These findings highlight the importance of specifying governance structure when predicting behavior of nontraditional firms. Empirical tests of behavioral differences between traditional and nontraditional firms will be more meaningful if the governance structure of nontraditional firms is common and specified. A limitation of our study is our inability to control for the timing of degeneration of producer cooperatives. This would be one element of governance structure to consider in future data collection.

These findings highlight the need to avoid drawing broad policy conclusions from the behavior of a specific subset of nontraditional firms.

This chapter highlights the importance of carefully specifying stakeholder and governance structure when predicting behavior of nontraditional firms. It is of interest to anyone using a sample of nontraditional firms to test general hypotheses about their behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the experiences of women who were engaged in a competitive retail shopping event.

This study employed the discovery‐oriented grounded theory approach, in order to interpret field data from observations and interviews from 30 women who participated in a bridal gown sale event.

This paper exposes the manner in which the women shoppers shifted from competitive mindsets and behaviors, to cooperative ones, with other women shoppers. Four complimentary “trajectories” help explain how this takes place by demonstrating that the women progressed through mindsets of competition, co‐opetition, cooperation, and charity. The course of this process occurs within the realm of highly dynamic environments, which help foster the women's changing behaviors. The experiences of our participants converged such that this process of competition‐cooperation contributed to positive experiential value of the shopping trip.

This study focused only on women shoppers in the USA and concentrated only on one retail sale event. Future studies should expand the cultural diversity of the participants and increase the contextual boundaries of the phenomenon to include other instances of competitive shopping.

Understanding how women consumers engage in competition, and consequently cooperation, should be of considerable interest to retailers wishing to execute competitively natured events and promotions. The paper's findings suggest that women value competitive shopping events because of the social experience they provide, not solely for the product that might be acquired. The study contributes to our understanding of how women interpret social interaction, manage relationships with one another in retail settings, and are co‐creators of intrinsic shopping value. It also offers a more favorable viewpoint of competition in the retail domain than what is often construed in mainstream media.

This research is one of the first to focus on women shoppers who are engaged in a competitive shopping event. For consumer theorists, this study offers insights into social behavioral processes. It provides a platform for continuing research in the area of consumer competition.

This paper aims to re-evaluate social enterprise (SE) history to pinpoint a pluralist turn in communitarian philosophy during the 1970s, which has the potential to transform labour and consumer rights in enterprise development.

Through a close examination of model rules created by founders of the FairShares Association (FSA), the authors find that the communitarian origins of SE are disturbingly obscured and hidden.

In studying FSA documents and building a timeline of the development of the FairShares Model (FSM), the authors found links between SE developments in the UK, continental Europe, Asia, North/South America and the development of solidarity cooperatives.

The authors argue that the discovery of a communitarian pluralist turn advances “new cooperativism” by enfranchising both labour and users in industrial relations (IR). Using this insight, they challenge accounts of SE history and argue for more research on SE’s potential contribution to radical IR.

The paper highlights the potential of the FSM as a vehicle for catalysing new SE and IR practices that share wealth and power more equitably between social entrepreneurs, workforce members, service/product users and community/social investors.

The main aim of our study is to demonstrate that the Italian way to marketing included not only the “advertising artists” but also what can be labelled as the social network approach, which was mainly used by cooperative enterprises. Focussing on the case study of the Granarolo co-operative, the paper discusses the social network method of marketing as it emerged during the 1950s and 1960s in Italy.

The research draws on different types of primary sources, including co-operative business records, interviews, publications, newspaper articles and advertisements.

In the age of mass consumption, the Granarolo co-operative developed an original marketing strategy based on social networks. This strategy can be considered a kind of community brand based on shared values pre-existing to the brand itself and a kind of viral marketing put in place before the electronic revolution.

The research focusses on the Granarolo case study. It can be extended to other co-operative enterprises. However, it is unknown whether the anticipation of viral marketing has also been used by private enterprises.

The marketing strategies analyzed in the paper could be a interesting solution for undertakings strictly connected and rooted in their local community or in their Web community.

In today’s world of the Web, this physical constraint no longer exists, and the social method of marketing exceeds the regional and even the national level. In conclusion, this was an innovative method of marketing and advertising that came into being, ahead of its time, about a half a century before modern Web-based social networks were conceived, yet uses the same concepts, hence its extraordinary originality.

This study is the result of an original research which tries to highlight what we could label the Italian way to marketing. Taking into consideration the first two decades of the Granarolo history and focussing on the marketing strategy, our contribution seeks to examine how the social networks approach worked and in what it differs from today brand community and viral marketing.