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Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

People Willing to Pay More for Cooperative News

The subscription e-commerce market has grown by more than 100% percent a year over the past five years. It is also seen as the most viable path for survival by the newspapers.



 I did a bit of research on whether cooperatives might have an advantage in subscription based business models by doing a small survey of 106 people through Profilic, a service used by many universities, asking:



“Imagine two otherwise similar online newspapers that would require a monthly subscription fee. The other one would be owned by investors. The other one would be owned by readers who pay a monthly subscription. In the subscriber owned newspaper the board of directors would be elected by the subscribers on one-subscriber-one-vote basis. In the investor owned newspaper the investors would choose the board of directors. Which one would you subscribe to?”


79.2% of the respondents chose the subscriber owned newspaper.



I then asked which one they would choose if the investor owned would be 10% cheaper. 65.1% chose the subscriber owned. 


25% cheaper? 44.3% for the subscriber owned.


50% cheaper? 23.6%.



Read the rest at Coop Exchange

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