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A Comparative Performance Analysis of New Wave Food Cooperatives and Private Food Stores
Author(s) -
SCHIFERL ELIZABETH A.,
BOYNTON ROBERT D.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
journal of consumer affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.582
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1745-6606
pISSN - 0022-0078
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-6606.1983.tb00307.x
Subject(s) - minor (academic) , quality (philosophy) , business , marketing , advertising , grocery store , work (physics) , family member , private label , agricultural science , agricultural economics , economics , engineering , mechanical engineering , medicine , philosophy , environmental science , epistemology , family medicine , political science , law
The purpose of this study was to determine what “new wave” store front food cooperatives offer their patrons, relative to private grocery stores. A marketbasket price survey of 73 non‐meat food items was conducted at 10 cooperatives and eight private stores in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area in 1981. Consumer satisfaction was examined via a mail questionnaire returned by 1,089 patrons of both store types. A new kind of food cooperative shopper was identified, the minor user. Minor users were more recent cooperative patrons and more closely resembled a traditional, established, middle‐class family. Unlike the more traditional co‐op user, price was the most important store choice criterion for the minor user. Cooperatives were judged by their patrons to be performing slightly less satisfactorily than private stores. However, the two store types were not found to differ in their performance of the two functions most important to consumers, i.e., price and quality. Member shoppers at a cooperative could save 15 percent, or about $290 per year for the average household, a return on a typical member's work contribution of $6.04 per hour.