WHEN customers buy from the big stores, they get nothing except some discounts that are few and far between and some miniscule points from the “loyalty cards” that are issued by these stores. On the other hand, when members buy from their own consumer cooperative, they not only get discounts that are generous and are very regular, they also get rebates on a monthly basis, on top of dividends that they get on an annual basis.
The big stores spend a lot of money to win the loyalty of customers, and “loyalty cards” are just one of their many tools. On the other hand, the cooperatives already have the built in loyalty of their members, meaning to say that they need not be won over. Obviously, the few discounts and points that are being offered by the big stores are nothing compared to the big discounts, rebates and dividends that are being offered by the consumer cooperatives.
Unlike the big stores, the consumer cooperatives are also able to offer credit to their members, usually by way of salary deductions against their purchases. On the other hand, the big stores could only offer credit that is charged to credit cards, or the so-called debit cards. By comparison, the credit cards would of course charge interests, whereas the salary deductions are usually interest free.
By definition, “manpower cooperatives” are different from “consumer cooperatives”, but the two could be combined under one registration with the Cooperatives Development Authority (CDA). The other alternative for them is to register as a “multipurpose cooperative” under the CDA, a choice that would enable them to go into other business lines such as credit and transport.
The questions that I asked my wife and daughter were actually just theoretical, because both the “baristas” and their customers could actually join together in one consumer cooperative, in much the same way that the drivers and their passengers could join together in one transport cooperative. That’s also the same for the sales people and their shoppers who could also join together in one cooperative. It is not the same for the workers and their employers, who should not join together in one manpower cooperative, because of conflicts of interests between them.
At the risk of sounding redundant, I would again say that I am not campaigning against the big stores, because they too have a right to do business in a free country that encourages free enterprise. My wish however is for them to stop the practice of “contractualization”, or if they could not do that, my other wish is for them to only engage the services of genuine manpower cooperatives, and not the fake cooperatives that they themselves have created, or the fake cooperatives that were created by some big corporations that are now pretending to be real manpower cooperatives.
If only to console the owners of the big stores who may be disturbed by my writings, I would say that in a free market economy, they would always have their own customers, perhaps among the upper middle class people who would always be attracted to their high end offerings, including their name name brands that are being sold at major major prices. Having said that, I would add another wish, that hopefully they would leave alone the consumer cooperatives that would tend to cater to a lower middle class market, offering only affordable brands along with some quality generic goods. (To be continued/PN)
