The Digitalization of the European Agri-Food Cooperative Sector.

What is it about?

The digitization of the agri-food sector is a strategic priority in the political agenda of European institutions. The opportunity to improve the competitiveness and efficiency of the sector offered by new technologies comes together with its potential to face new economic and environmental challenges. This research aims to analyze the level of digitalization of the European agri-food cooperative sector from the construction of a composite synthetic index. Such an index is to be based on a diverse set of variables related to electronic commerce and the services offered through the internet. It also evaluates how European cooperatives influence the degree of technological adoption depending on their size or the wealth of the country where they carry out their activity. The empirical analytical method is thus used, through the analysis of frequencies and correlations. The results obtained reveal the existence of a suboptimal and heterogeneous degree of digitization of European agri-food cooperatives, clearly conditioned by their size and the wealth of the country where they operate. In this situation, it is recommended to promote public policies that guarantee high-performance digital connectivity, an improvement in training in digital skills and the promotion of cooperative integration processes.

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Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

Why is it important?

his research intends to contribute to the study of the degree of implementation of newdigital technologies in business organizations and, more particularly, in the European agri-food cooperative sector, which has unquestionable strategic importance for the EuropeanUnion (EU) [1]. In this way, the main objectives set forth can be defined as two: (i) developan exploratory study on the degree of digitalization of European agri-food cooperativesbased on two specific dimensions of analysis: their presence on the Internet and theuse of information and communication technology (ICT) for commercial purposes byevaluating the online sales channels and tools present on their websites; and (ii) identifythe determining factors of the digitization index of European agri-food cooperatives, basedon two variables: the size of the cooperative societies and the wealth of the country wherethey carry out their activity.In order to achieve both objectives, we propose to build a composite index to allowfor the development of a comparative analysis of the degree of technological integration ofa representative sample composed of 454 EU (28) agri-food cooperatives. Additionally, theanalysis of frequencies and correlations will allow for the determination of the degree ofinfluence of the different factors on the digitization index of cooperatives