Consumer Cooperatives

                Consumer Co-operatives are formed by consumers in obtaining various goods at reasonable various goods at reasonable prices and guarantee standard. It is a legal body, registered under the Co-operative Act B.E.2542, with its members as its share-holders. Members voluntarily co-invest in their co-operative stores to fulfill their purchasing needs in a way that will sustain their economic well-being.

The first co-operative store is Thailand was established in 1937 at a village in Sena district, Ayuthaya province. Later on, it was spread all over the country not only in general business areas but many of them operated in the specific areas such as universities, colleges, hospitals, factories, military offices, and so no.

During the last decade of 20th century, the competitive degree in retailing business in Thailand is aggressively high. The big international retailing stores start their operations and expand over the whole kingdom. At the same time, in other scale, the convenience franchised stores also expanded; new shops were opened day by day. The high price competition and large budget of sales promotion of the modern superstores created the great impacts to cooperative stores. This was not affected only to the cooperative stores but to the small retailing shops and stores at local level too. These difficulties seem to go on with long lasting. Anyway the cooperative stores in specific areas had less impact than those in general business areas – in the battle fields. Many cooperative stores had closed down.

The aggregate business volume of consumers’ cooperatives (cooperative stores) during 1990 to 2001 is shown in Figure 12, and the average business volume (per member) is show in Figure 13.