Observation on consumer's cooperative management by Como Japan (Japanese cooperative store modernizing organization)
1994
Sato, M. (Hokkaido Univ., Sapporo (Japan). Faculty of Agriculture)
The eleven largest Japanese consumer cooperatives have joined forces and organized COMO Japan (Japanese cooperative Store Modernizing Organization) to aid them in the highly competitive market in Japan. The object of this paper is to analyze the present conditions of the consumer cooperative movement and the problems COMO Japan is facing. Results can be summarized as follows: 1) Establishment of new consumer cooperative stores are not decided based on member's needs, 2) consumer cooperative stores struggle in competition with local supermarkets 3) COMO Japan, joint business of the eleven largest consumer cooperatives have forced its management policy to their local affiliated consumer cooperatives and 4) COMO Japan have lost their diversity of service, which is a unique character of consumer cooperatives. Therefore, the most important task in the consumer cooperative movement is not to further promote COMO Japan, but instead to establish regional cooperatives based on the individual need of the local customers. The role of consumer cooperative members is to be actively involved in promoting rural industry and regional agriculture as well as making an effort to reform the present conditions
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Information Technology Center