Collaborative and customer-centered value creation in cooperatives

Cross-sector cooperation in times of radical social and technological change

Abstract

In a rapidly evolving economic and technological environment, cooperatives need to rethink their approaches to collaboration and customer-centric strategies. The global economy is characterized by radical social and technological change. This is reshaping customer expectations and business processes. Companies with the highest market share show long-term potential for success, as the use of network effects often leads to multipliers and ultimately to rapid growth rates.

For cooperative enterprises, this may mean that expertise must be pooled across traditional sector boundaries in order to create resilient solutions for the cooperative and its customers and members. By integrating their business activities into the daily routine or daily life of their customers, cooperatives can serve a shared market in a way that puts customers at the center of their activities, increases network effects, and thereby creates mutual added value. This customer-centric approach enables cooperatives to move from short-term, transactional interactions to long-term, relational, and loyalty-oriented customer relationships, thereby ensuring sustainable growth and competitive advantages.

This article examines how cooperatives can jointly serve their customers across sectors by embedding their collaboration in customers' daily routines. Practical insights are drawn from a cooperative project between a housing cooperative and a cooperative bank.