Consum cooperativa. fundamentals of management

CONSUM

The Consum cooperative was established in 1975 as a consumer cooperative its first supermarket was in Alaquàs (Valencia) and had a group of 600 consumer members. Since then, the evolution of Consum has been characterized by continued growth to position themselves today as the largest cooperative of Valencia and one of the first companies in the distribution sector. The rapidinitial growth of the commercial network and the number of consumer members consolidated the business and small consumer cooperatives were added in Silla, Enguera y L'Olleria (Valencia). Since 1987, there is a change in the pattern of expansion of the cooperative Consum, with the acquisition of other larger distribution companies: Vegeva, Ecoban, Alihogar and Jobac in Valencia and Distac y Disbor inCataluña. Consum established Eroski Group, acting as founding partner in the early 90's. This business alliance ended in February 2004, following the decision of the cooperative Consum to dissociate due to differences in the organizational model that was forming gradually. Currently, the cooperative Consum develops its activity on the commercial distribution sector through 585 Consum ownsupermarkets, in addition to the Charter franchises in a geographic scope of Valencia, Cataluña, Murcia, Castilla la Mancha and Andalucía. Employing over 9,000 staff, the collective membership now exceeds consumer million two hundred thousand people.

Consum belongs to the distribution sector. It offers food items, used for the needs of consumers in the best possible economic prices. Consum’s type oftarget customers is the majority of the population since its low prices try to reach to everyone. Consum is a cooperative company called CONSUM S COOP V. The size of Consum according to the European Commission is big since it has over 9000 employees and its income is nearly 1,500,000 thousand euros.

The table above shows data of Consum since 2001 until 2009; this includes: operating income,ordinary profit before tax, total assets, equity, financial and economical profitability, general liquidity, debt and finally employees’ number. The income, of the company we chose, on 2009 is nearly 1,500,000 thousand euros. The year before its income was about 150,000 thousand euros less this year its income has grown significantly. On 2001 its income was 584,000 thousand euros while on 2007 itwas nearly 1,000,000 thousand euros. Throughout 2008 Consum grew significantly and its income shows this fact. The employees’ number on 2007 was 5,884 while on 2008 this number went up to 8,340. This increase in employees shows that the company grew largely. Last year Consum had over 8,700 employees while on 2001 it had 4,686. The total assets of the company also demonstrate the big difference insize of Consum between the years 2007 where this was 447,986 and 2008 where it was 715,324. In 2001 the total assets were 284,035 while last year’s assets were 709,737. This is more than twice between years 2001 and 2009. Consum’s debt on 2001 was nearly 80% nowadays it is about 75%. The debt reached its minimum percentage at 2006 where it was 67.31%. Another important fact is that the economicalprofitability of the company has always been around 2% to 3% while the financial profitability varies this last years between 9% to 11%.

Consum started as a single supermarket in Valencia and has expanded to Albacete, Alicante, Almería, Castellón, Barcelona, Cuenca, Gerona, Granada, Jaén, Lleida, Murcia, Tarragona and Teruel. In total there are 585 supermarkets all in the places listedabove. In the next two years the company is going to invest 40 million euros to create 20 new supermarkets and expand its main supermarkets in Cataluña. This will mean that the total employees in Catulaña will be over 2,400. This will make this part of Spain the biggest concentration of our company’s supermarkets with over 150 of the over 600 supermarkets they will have in 2012. This demonstrates...