A research on factors affecting cooperative-member relationships, a case of Izmir province

Cooperatives are one of the most important organizational structures that provide economic benefits to both producers and consumers, as well as social benefits to society. The level of the relations of the members with the cooperatives, which constitutes the social dimension of the cooperatives, is directly affecting the success of the cooperative. In this study, cooperative-member relationship in terms of different types of cooperatives was analyzed. While examining the cooperative-member relationship, member participation in the management, management satisfaction, expectations of marketing and technical support were discussed. Face to face surveys were conducted with 282 members of irrigation, fishery, agricultural credit, agricultural sales and agricultural development cooperatives operating in İzmir province within the scope of research. Descriptive tests to determine the member characteristics in terms of cooperative types, AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) to identify members' preferred initiative to achieve success, factor analysis to determine the factors that are effective to measure cooperative-partner relationship and correlation coefficient to determine the relationship between factors and cooperative types were used. According to research findings, the level of managerial satisfaction and financial expectation of the agricultural sales cooperative members and the participation of the agricultural credit cooperative members in the management were found to be lower than the other cooperative members. In order to increase the level of both managerial satisfaction and participation in the management, it should be ensured that training and meeting activities should be increased in order to eliminate the distance between the members and the cooperative management, and the partners should have a greater say in the cooperative management. Within the scope of marketing activities of agricultural sales cooperatives, taking a more active role in the market and have a say in the formation of the market price will have a positive impact to improve the financial expectation level of its members. The members pay the utmost importance to the marketing criteria and want to realize their marketing activities mostly through the cooperatives. The level of meeting the expectations of the fisheries cooperative members in terms of both marketing and technical support was found to be quite inadequate. On the other hand, agricultural development cooperative is the most successful cooperative in terms of the marketing opportunities provided to its members and the level of meeting the financial expectations of its members. It is suggested that cooperative products should be preferred in marketing to meet the needs of local administrations and public institutions, and agricultural development cooperatives, which are successful in this regard, should serve as examples for other types of cooperatives. According to the findings, village cooperatives operating at more local level such as agricultural development, fishery and irrigation cooperatives are more democratic and more compatible with the cooperative principles in a more structured organizational structure compared to other cooperative types. In Turkey, it is the fact that cooperatives should concentrated of marketing members' products and focusing on input procurement programs to reduce production costs. It is an issue that should be considered in terms of agricultural policies in order that these activities are included in the support policies by the relevant ministries and that the supports are guided by the cooperatives.