The consumer cooperative movement in Finland and the lessons we can learn from it

Abstract

Finland has a strong consumer cooperative movement with a market share of about 46 percent of everyday products. The road to success for cooperatives in Finland has not been a smooth process. In this article we describe the history of the Finnish retail cooperative SOK and raise the question of what we can learn from the experiences of retail cooperatives. Historical research strives to demonstrate how things used to be: what happened, why it happened, and what the consequences were. It seeks explanations using cause and effect. Economic research conducted by business science aims to find ways for financial organizations and entrepreneurs to succeed. This article combines these perspectives. The source of this article is research literature. The beginning of the twentieth century turned out to be, in many ways, a golden age for Finnish cooperatives. After World War II, in the 1950s and particularly in the 1960s, the general development of Finnish society clearly accelerated, and the consumer cooperative movement was unable to keep pace with this development. After a severe crisis, a new rise began. What can we learn from this? In this article, we highlight several development trajectories and finally summarize them in ten main points. The list can be summarized as follows: internalize and stay true to the purpose and goals of the cooperative, manage the model accordingly, find a balance between the commercial and member community aspects of the model (the two different but complementary roles), and stay up-to-date and future-oriented. Historically, little success has been the result of doing the opposite: having too many secondary interests, forgetting or ignoring the cooperative identity, and romanticizing the past.