Talk:Supermarket cooperative

The coop brand is really used all over Europe, afaik. See also ipercoop. -- Egil 14:43, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Misunderstanding?

Coop_(supermarket) redirects to Co-op_(supermarket). Coop isn't the same as Co-op; the former is a company that consists of supermarkets in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, rather than the English chain.

Is there a reason why Coop_(supermarket) redirects to Co-op_(supermarket), or is it just a misunderstading of the two nearly identical names? If it is so, we should get it settled, so Coop can get its own article.
Ghent 15:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is not a company that consists of supermarkets in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden that is called Coop.

In all cases that I know, Coop is a brand, or trademark, used by companies that are run by the cooperative principle. In Denmark, in Norway, in Sweden, in Italy, and I think in many other European countries, there are national companies, that all use a Coop brand to varying degrees. The cooperative principle means that these companies are owned by their members, who are regular customers.

The same thing is the case for the UK Co-op. Please read this article carefully, then read the Cooperative article. -- Egil 15:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quite certain that Coop Norden A/S is an actual company that owns stores. I'll ask them whenever I get a chance to. Ghent 18:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, it seems the national cooperative entities of Scandinavia joined in 2002 under the name Coop Norden A/S. But there are Coops in other European countries too, and this article seems to be about their Coop brand, not the UK one in particular. -- Egil 19:54, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

But since it's an actual company, and not just what you said above, I think it should have its own page. If someone else called themselves Phillips, we would have a page for both and not just a shared article, right?
Ghent 07:41, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm really not sure a separate article is warranted for each of these companies. Any anyway, for UK, there is already an article on the Co-operative Group. So either this article should be redirected there, or this should be an article on the international Coop trademark for supermarkets. And mention the Coop in UK, in Scandinavia, in Italy etc. -- Egil 09:22, 13 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you mean, but since the other companies most likely use the co-operation concept, Coop Norden does not belong in the article about supermarkets that co-op(erate), in my opinion.
Ghent 13:46, 15 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with Co-operative Group

I suggest this article should be merged with Co-operative Group. The reason for this is that there are supermarkets in many different countries which use the name Co-op. At present, this page is mainly pertinent to the UK brand. Note the Co-op disambiguation page refers to this article as "A supermarket chain in the United Kingdom".

As mentioned before, there are supermarkets in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, that use the Coop brand. This is also the case in Japan - [1] (note "Co-op Brand Products") and no doubt many other countries. As far as I know, the cooperative groups in these countries have no relation to the UK group, nor to each other. In the United States, many cooperative health food stores are called food co-ops. However, they are generally independent entities that do not use it as a brand, but as a descriptive term.

Also, if this article is titled Co-op (supermarket), the definition shouldn't include "convenience stores, funeral directors, a small number of department stores"; that information is provided in the Co-operative Group article, and the Cooperative article. --Dforest 09:20, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See Talk:Co-operative Group. My main point is that there must be some Co-op article that covers the international Co-op as a brand/concept/business-model, and that things about the UK Co-op in particular can be in Co-operative Group. -- Egil 07:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is the Cooperative article, which could well have a section about Co-op as a brand (or many brands) used internationally. But it seems inaccurate to call it "the international Co-op'", because in my understanding, the cooperative groups in different countries are mostly independent of each other. They may well have different definitions of what constitutes a Co-op in UK, Norden, Italy, Japan, etc. Also:

The "Co-op" refers to supermarkets, convenience stores, funeral directors, a small number of department stores and other businesses owned by a variety of local Co-operative societies but largely marketed and operated in a co-ordinated way.

The bolded part above does not apply to the food co-ops in the United States. Most individual stores are independent of each other and are not marketed and operated in a co-ordinated way. They generally do not sell own-brand products, nor use "co-op" as a brand. However, they do use the basic principles of a consumer cooperative, though each store's committee sets its own rules.

My point in merging is that most of the information in this article duplicates Co-operative Group, the comments about Europe and Norden excluded. --Dforest 08:12, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The information is as you say mostly a duplication - however I came to the article following a link from the British Supermarkets category. It would have seemed odd to me if the Co-op food stores hadn't been included in that category. Guyal of Sfere 10:28, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is much disagreement here. May I suggest:

For the article Co-op (supermarket), any content wrt to UK should be merged into Co-operative Group
The remaining content should be moved to Co-op (brand), so that this article is about the Co-op brand as used internationally, with pointers to national organization as required.
The disambiguation on Co-op is changed to Co-op (brand), with the text changed accordingly.

-- Egil 10:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, everything international can be moved to Cooperative. But that article has much already, and I think it is very useful to have an article with an overview of the Co-op brand as used world wide. -- Egil 10:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE

The (Discuss) tag on the front page points to Talk:Co-operative Group. So see also this page. The consesus seems to be that there is no merge of these two particular pages. -- Egil 14:27, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A single concurring reply is by no means a consensus. Dforest 17:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The point that I made on Talk:Co-operative Group before I read the latest comments here were that I felt there should be a page describing the co-op brand as used in many parts of Europe, and individual pages on the retail co-operatives involved, which are indeed starting to appear in the UK context. The UK branding information could be developed at Co-operative Retail Trading Group, although I concede this could be developed at Co-operative Group with careful consideration of how to avoid duplication or forking with pages on all the other retail societies (around 20).

Mtiedemann 12:28, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Either of the two may work; I am not familiar enough with the Co-operative Group to comment. The trouble I see with this page is the ambiguity of the title "Co-op (supermarket)", as it means considerably different things in different parts of the world, while the Co-op disambiguation page still refers to this page as "A supermarket chain in the United Kingdom". If we have a page describing the co-op brand used in Europe, it should be named appropriately. But it may be preferable to have a page describing co-op food markets worldwide, keeping in mind that many of the independent co-ops (such as in the US) do not use it as a brand, aside from sharing the Rochdale Principles. (According to the ICA version [1996], all co-ops are independent; I am referring to co-ops independent of national group oversight.)

Perhaps Consumer cooperative? There should also be a page on the International Co-operative Alliance [2], the main international cooperative body, which is responsible for keeping & revising the Statement on the Co-operative Identity [3] that many co-ops worldwide abide by (at least in theory). Dforest 14:08, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]