Dominant Logic of Consumer Co-operative: The case of iCOOP Korea's Fair Trade business strategy

TOPIC 9 (Strategies)-STAGE 4 (development)-Micro (co-operative firm level) The research aims to investigate business strategy of Korea’s consumer co-operative. The case study method has been employed for doing a research of... [ view full abstract ]

TOPIC 9 (Strategies)-STAGE 4 (development)-Micro (co-operative firm level)

The research aims to investigate business strategy of Korea’s consumer co-operative. The case study method has been employed for doing a research of Fair Trade business in iCOOP Korea, the largest consumer co-operative in Korea. Fair Trade is a business practice to have social, economy, and political purposes (Huybrechts, 2012). Among the various perspectives in business strategy theories, the dominant logic gives a vantage view to describe interactive process in strategy formulation and implementation (Prahalad & Bettis, 1986; Bettis & Prahalad, 1995). The research findings are as follows. Firstly, the dominant logic of iCOOP Korea derived from the nature of consumer co-operative fits well in accounting for Fair Trade business with cooperative-centrism and consumption-centrism. It is interacted with strategy, value and performance. Secondly, the case of iCOOP Korea shows Fair Trade strategy has reinforced the dominant logic of consumer co-operative. This research gives us an insight to understand business strategy of consumer co-operatives, when they implement new business practices. Dominant logic is a distinct factor to affect iCOOP Korea’s Fair Trade in terms of organization intelligence, which makes us to interpret the information about Fair Trade. However, current research is not able to identify different dominant logics of several consumer co-operatives in Korea. Consumer co-operatives are organizations to be constructed by various actors so that it is essential for members of co-operatives to agree their own dominant logic. The future research has to illustrate different dominant logics among consumer co-operatives.

Keywords:
consumer co-operative, strategy, Fair Trade, dominant logic, iCOOP Korea

References
Huybrechts, B. (2012). Fair Trade Organizations and Social Enterprise: Social Innovation through Hybrid Organization Models. Routledge.
Bettis, R. A., & Prahalad, C. K. (1995). The Dominant Logic: Retrospective and Extension. Strategic Management Journal, 16(1), 5–14.
Prahalad, C. K., & Bettis, R. A. (1986). The Dominant Logic: a New Linkage between Diversity and Performance. Strategic Management Journal, 7, 485–501.