Assessing the performance of food co-ops in the US
| dc.creator | Alia, Didier | |
| dc.creator | Katchova, Ani | |
| dc.creator | Woods, Timothy A. | |
| dc.date | 2017-04-01T15:00:38Z | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-09T10:04:15Z | |
| dc.description | Food cooperatives (co-ops) as a key component of the local food network play an increasingly important role in the US food system. Co-ops use various strategies to promote local products, ensure a greater commitment of members, and the rofitability and sustainability of the business. This paper assessed the effectiveness of these strategies as perceived and appreciated by co-ops' members using survey data from a national study on eight large food cooperatives in the U.S. The survey identifies a wide range of attributes related to store and product characteristics, and marketing and management strategies. It asks interviewees to rank their co-op on these attributes on a Likert-scale of 0-4. Using Principal Component Analysis, we aggregate and combine information from the large number of rankings into a six major categories. Next, exploiting the hierarchical structure of the data with members nested within their respective co-ops, we use Hierarchical Linear Modeling methods to identify the factors that determine the perceived performance of co-ops. The results show that in general member has a strong positive perception of the performance of their co-ops in term of quality of the products, quality of the management and the service, and the physical quality of the store. We also find there is a lot heterogeneity among co-ops and member socio-demographic and economic characteristics are strongly correlated with their perception. | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.22004/ag.econ.230140 | |
| dc.identifier | https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/230140/files/SAEA%20Paper%20Food%20Co-op%20performance%20in%20the%20US.pdf | |
| dc.identifier | http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/230140 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/615151 | |
| dc.language | eng | |
| dc.publisher | ||
| dc.source | http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/230140 | |
| dc.title | Assessing the performance of food co-ops in the US | |
| dc.type | Text |