Suter, Peter Gmür, Markus 2014 Co-operatives have a statistically low macroeconomic relevance; nevertheless they occasionally are big players in specific sectors and countries. In Switzerland, the two largest retail co-operatives, Migros and Coop, are responsible for 8% of GDP. In comparison to its neighbouring countries, the co-operative is a very popular legal form in Switzerland with more than 10,000 organisations. The number of co-operatives in the more heavily populated Germany seems to be very low, only 8,106 (Table 18.1); although it should not be ignored that 20 million Germans are members of these co-operatives, which provide jobs for 440,000 people (ICA, 2011). In Switzerland, co-operatives can mainly be found in the financial, retail, social housing and agriculture sectors (Gmür and Lichtsteiner, 2009). But several other successful co-operatives also exist in niche markets. One of these is the Mobility Car Sharing co-operative. The principle of car sharing is very simple: instead of owning a car the individual has access to a fleet of vehicles on an as-needed basis. Therefore s/he gains the benefits of a "private" car without the responsibilities and full cost of ownership (Shaheen et al., 1999). Today the concept of car sharing is widespread, but mostly still limited to certain local areas, with a focus on bigger cities. Switzerland is an exception and can actually be called the motherland of car sharing for two reasons. application/pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/306636 https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/306636/files/6_sutergmr2014.pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/306636/files/6.1_Mobility_Car_Sharing_An_Evolving_Co-Operative_Structure_Suter_und_Gm_r_1_.pdf eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.4337/9781783472024.00026 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess License undefined Research Handbook on Sustainable Co-operative Enterprise. Case Studies of Organisational Resilience in the Co-operative Business Model / Limnios, Elena M.. - Cheltenham/Northampton: Edward Elgar. - 2014, p. 301-326 Co-operatives mobility car sharing member value info:eu-repo/classification/udc/33 Mobility Car Sharing: An Evolving Cooperative Structure http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_3248