Failing to develop a sense of ownership: A study in the consumer co-operative context

Abstract

Emerging interest in psychological ownership in the domain of marketing calls for better understanding of situations wherein the customers are also the owners of the company. Accordingly, psychological ownership has been proposed to capture the intimate link between customer-owners and the cooperative. However, empirical research has found a diluted relationship between customer-owners and cooperatives in practice. The paper examines empirical data from customer-owners of a Finnish retail cooperative for insight into the factors that prevent feelings of psychological ownership from emerging. By means of thematic analysis, the study identified nine challenges and several distinct reasons for them.

Keywords:

• psychological ownership
• consumer cooperative
• cooperative

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

Consumer cooperative is a company form that merges the roles of customer and owner. Accordingly, a sense of ownership, a mental state where one feels the cooperative as his/her, has been proposed to capture the intimate link between customer-owners and the cooperative. As our article shows, a sense of ownership towards the company does not; however, develop automatically after the juridical ownership relationship has been formed. The question is whether ownership concretises in the mind of the customer-owner or not. To increase understanding of this issue, we identify all together 9 different challenges and 27 reasons behind them to explain why customer-owners may not develop feelings of ownership towards their cooperative. This framework provides managers of a customer-owned company a solid tool to evaluate their own operations.

Acknowledgements

Author Antti Talonen gratefully acknowledges the grant support of Foundation for Economic Education (Liikesivistysrahasto) and Finnish Insurance Association (Suomen vakuutusyhdistys) for writing this article.

Conflicts of interest

None.

Additional information

Funding

The author received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Antti Paavali Talonen

Antti Paavali Talonen Article’s theme and context relates to Mr. Talonen’s wider research interest. He will defend his doctoral dissertation on customer ownership and mutual insurance companies in the end of October 2018 at the University of Tampere. This specific article forms one important building block of the dissertation. Professor Jussila and Dr. Tuominen have an extensive experience in the field of consumer cooperative research, while professor Koskinen has been publishing articles that concentrate on customer-view in the context of financial institutions.