Consumers' perspective on cooperatives in the digital market and their cooperative perceptions: The case of Edirne province

Traditional business models are being threatened by innovative business models in the present day. Therefore, businesses make an effort to promptly adapt to the digitalization process both in Turkey and in the world. Several businesses have completed their digital transition phases in Turkey while there are also businesses whose digital transition phases are not yet completed. Cooperatives, on the other hand, are still in the process of digitalization. The concept of consumption has acquired a new dimension with the cooperatives and other businesses taking up e-commerce and the online consumption dimension has been adopted after the phenomenon of traditional consumption reached a breaking point. The cooperative brands that are still developing in the digital dimension must acknowledge the consumers' purchasing decisions and the factors influencing these decisions and make strategic moves accordingly. In this regard, findings were obtained through surveys conducted with 130 consumers from the provincial center of Edirne. Within the scope of the study, it has been determined that consumers' knowledge of cooperatives is partially and it has been observed that consumers consist of young and working population. In the study, the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis one-way analysis of variance factors that affect consumers purchasing branded products, branded products from digital platforms cooperative and cooperative relationship between demographic variables with the status of their viewpoints tested. It was determined that the most important factors affecting the consumers' purchasing of cooperative branded products from digital platforms are quality and reasonable price has been. However, consumers think that the product range of cooperatives is not wide and that they are not sufficiently transferred to digital platforms. Keywords: Digitalization, E-commerce, Cooperative, Consumer preferences