Consumer Co-Operatives in India

Presented By :Aviral Kaushik - 1961

Jagdish Patidar - 1967
Manish Gupta - 1972

What is Consumer Co-Operatives

Business owned by its customers for their mutual gain,
oriented toward service rather than monetary profit.
The customers or consumers are also the individuals who
have provided the capital required to launch that
enterprise.

Objectives
To serve its members and customers with goods required by them for household consumption.
It is also expected to stabilize the price line and check the exploitation of the consumers by the private
businessmen.

Structure
It has a four tier structure.
1. At national level - National Co-operative Consumers Federation of India Ltd. (NCCF)
2. At state level - State Co-operative Consumers Organisations
3. At the Wholesale level, there are Consumer Co-operative Stores which further source the Primary
level stores.
4. At villages PACS and Marketing Societies

NCCF
National Cooperative Consumers Federation of India Limited (NCCF) is the apex federation of the
consumer cooperatives in the country.
Objective - To provide supply support to the consumer cooperatives and other distributing agencies
for distribution of consumer goods at reasonable and affordable rates besides rendering
technical guidance and assistance to the consumer cooperatives.
Services provided:1. Create and promote the formation of cadres of employees for the NCCF and member institutions and
arrange for their proper training in collaboration with NCUI.
2. Render technical guidance and assistance to its member institutions in particular, and consumer
cooperative societies in general in grading, packaging, standardization, bulk-buying, storing, pricing,
account keeping, other business techniques and management methods to improve and increase their
operation and management efficiency.
3. Establish, run or sponsor processing of agricultural commodities like food grains, pulses, spices, tea,
oilseeds, etc., and manufacturing units for the production of consumer goods, if necessary, in
collaboration with other agencies.
4. Acquire land, building, warehouse, vehicles, factories, workshops, machinery and equipment for its
activities.
5. Coordinate the working of its member institutions with other national level cooperative institutions.

Advantages of Consumer Co-Operatives

1) The purchases of the store are made in large quantities which ensures more trade discounts in
purchase. The presence of more trade discounts facilitate purchase at a lower price.
2) It can supply goods to the consumers at lower price because it has effected economical purchase
by availing more trade discounts.
3) It incurs less expenditure on advertisement and thereby helps in the reduction of selling price of
the product.
4) The consumers are protected against unfair trade because the stores purchase quality products
directly from the producers.
5) The formation of co-operative stores develops the spirit of co-operation and self-help. By this, it
has a high social and education value.

6) It develops managerial ability of the members because they are given a chance in the
management.

Disadvantages of Consumer Co-Operatives

1) The stores are established to cater the needs of small medium income group people.
2) Most of the stores are uneconomical size because of inadequate finance raised from its
members.
3) The stores do not exercise efficiency in management because these are managed by
amateurs who are not professional managers.
4) The inadequate finance of the store does not allow to go for large quantity purchase.
5) It lacks loyalty of all the members and as such these are managed by few members. The
progress of the store is hampered when all the members are not loyal to the operation of the
store.
6) It lacks proper sales promotion drives by the salesman.