Abstract
During the 1990s, a new type of agricultural cooperative called New Generation Cooperatives (NGC) has been established especially in the Northwest area of the United States.
The main business strategy of NGC is to try to find regional resources that could be marketed in the niche market, therefore the problem NGC will face or is facing is how it can be successful in the markets of major agricultural or livestock products.
In the livestock industry including both of the production and slaughtering, processing, the small number of producers and packers occupy the large share of the markets. Therefore U. S. Premium Beef that is one of the most prominent NGC and consists of producers at various stages could become the appropriate case study to analyze how NGC is working in the market of major agricultural products.
On the other hand, the vertical coordination based on producers is different from one initiated by packers and it has its own unique advantage. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the difference between the two, the advantage and the relationship between the advantage and the specific structure NGC has.
