Consumer-owned Retail Businesses

Johnston Birchall
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Johnston Birchall: Stirling University

Chapter 3 in People-Centred Businesses, 2011, pp 43-64 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Consumer co-operatives are probably the best known MOBs, and their history is well documented, not least by this author! The idea that consumers might organise to meet their own consumption needs reaches back to the earliest stages of the industrial revolution. However, it presupposes that people see themselves as consumers and have enough income to support the business. It also relies on their ability to find a method of governance that will ensure the business runs in the interests of the members, and a method of distributing surpluses in a way that is fair and provides an incentive to do business with the ‘co-op’ rather than with its competitors. Although the earliest experiments date back to the 1760s, this is why the official history of the consumer co-operative begins with the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844.

Keywords: Market Share; Fair Trade; Department Store; Retail Trade; Regional Society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-29529-2_3

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230295292_3

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