THE POSITIVE IMPACT OF CONSUMER CO-OPERATIVE TOWARDS REVAMPING THE NIGERIA ECONOMY
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
According to ILo cooperative society is ‘’ an autonomous association of persons varying in number, who are grappling with the same economic difficulties and who, voluntarily associate on a basis of equal rights and obligations, endeavor to solve those difficulties mainly by conducting at their own risk and undertaking to which they have transferred one or more of such of their economic functions as correspond to their common needs and by utilizing this undertaking in joint cooperation for their common material and moral benefits. Therefore, it is tool of living that enables the individual to achieve heights that cannot be reached in isolation. Consumer cooperatives are enterprises owned by consumers and managed democratically which aim at fulfilling the needs and aspirations of their members. They operate within the market systems, independently of the state, as a form of mutual aid, oriented towards services rather than pecuniary profit. Consumer cooperatives often take the form of retail outlets owned and operated by their consumers, such as health care, insurance, housing, utilities, and personal finance or including credit unions. In addition, Price stability is a situation in which prices in an economy do not change much overtime. Price stability would mean that an economy would not experience inflation or deflation. It is not common for an economy to have price stability. It is expected cooperatives to play a vital role in meeting the demand of consumers to porn production by providing at reasonable price compared to open market. Moreover, a cooperative provides services to members and nonmembers for their non-consumption purpose, and consumption and processing activity by stabilizing the market price. Among those problems the most frequently occurred and dominant one is price fluctuation of products in the market. The term price fluctuation means both prolonged inflation and deflation of price of products without expectation of marketers as well as users. In this case consumer cooperatives have vital role in stabilizing the price of goods by providing consumption goods at reasonable price and it save societies from exploitation of traders and unexpected inflation and deflation so, the researcher motivated to study this existing problem that restrict cooperatives societies in price stabilizing activities in selected case area. Some of those problems are: Due to market instability most of the time consumers are highly affected by middlemen exploitation (meaning increasing unnecessary costs on the users) the challenge force the consumers to use the product of cooperative at reasonable price without any exploitation. But there are some challenges which make cooperative society not play this role. Among these: High competitions that face cooperatives from private sectors/traders, inability of society to make integration with other cooperative such as producer cooperatives and Low level awareness of surrounding community about cooperatives and its role in price stability. As a result the researcher is motivated to this study, to identify role of cooperatives in price stabilizing and the challenge they face during market price stabilization.