Internationalisation of European Farmer Cooperatives : a Resource-based Approach

Ongoing changes in the agrifood industry question the ability of agricultural cooperatives to adapt to new challenges and define new market strategies to confront stronger competition on domestic, European and world markets. Internationalisation of production and marketing is one of the main answers to these challenges. Based on an empirical analysis of more than 30 European dairy cooperatives, the aim of this paper was to describe the diversity of strategies used by cooperatives on the international scene and to investigate possible specificities by comparison with investor-owned firms. In particular, an issue to be raised is that of perpetuating reference to the cooperative model and principles for cross-border business"