ABSTRACT
The Swedish consumer co-operative movement was from its beginnings in the late 19th century a dynamic factor in both retailing and industry. The focus of this chapter is to discuss KF and its strategies of renewal 2000–2020, and the basis for the analysis are the annual reports of KF. Espen Ekberg has contributed by comparative studies on the overall success of Nordic co-operatives as well as an analysis of the failure of Coop Norden. From the mid-1950s KF increasingly adopted a business, rather than a democratic, perspective, focusing on economic efficiency and centralization. One aspect characterizing this shift was the effort to decrease the number of cooperative societies. In the early 2020s, the business model of KF was explicitly focused on grocery retailing and wholesaling, where, in principle, all wholesaling operations had been co-ordinated under Coop Sverige AB while retailing operations were run by Coop Butiker and Stormarknader AB, both limited companies owned by KF.
