20(a) Provide the name and full description of the community that the applicant is committing to serve

Prototypical answer:

The EDEKA community derives from the association of grocery retailing cooperatives, EDEKA e.V.. The prerequisite of becoming a member of a grocery retailing cooperative requests each potential member of a cooperative society to sign a share of the cooperative. The cooperatives consist of several hundred members, who all have a share of the cooperative. Therefore the EDEKA community members are the EDEKA e.V., and their affiliates.
A cooperative is a legal entity owned and democratically controlled by its members. Members often have a close association with the company as producers or consumers of its products or services, or as its employees. The cooperative movement has been fueled globally by ideas of economic democracy in the mid-nineteenth century. Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that suggests an expansion of decision-making power from a small minority of corporate shareholders to a larger majority of public stakeholders. A retailersʹ cooperative (known as a secondary or marketing cooperative in some countries) is an organization which employs economies of scale on behalf of its affiliated members to receive discounts from manufacturers and to pool marketing. It is common for locally owned grocery stores, hardware stores and pharmacies. In this case the members of the cooperative are businesses rather than individuals.

EDEKA e.V. consists of EDEKA Chiemgau eG, EDEKA Duisburg eG, EDEKA Essen eG, EDEKA Hessenring eG, EDEKA Minden eG, EDEKA Nord eG, EDEKA Nordbayer-Sachsen-Thueringen eG, EDEKA Suedbayern eG, EDEKA Suedwest eG, EDEKA Zentral AG & Co. KG, EDEKABANK AG and EDEKA Konsumgenossenschaft Cottbus eG. The members of the cooperatives are stakeholders who influence the strategic direction from EDEKA e.V. by a bottom-up approach.
The EDEKA e.V. as the top body of those nine cooperatives and further entities is led by Mr. Ralf Gerkens. He is supported by the management of the nine cooperatives and other affiliates, as well as by advisory boards, giving non-binding recommendations to the management team for different business areas such as vegetables, meat, and others. They consist of community members who advise on different aspects such as economic, marketing, sales and financial aspects.

EDEKA e.V. and thereby the community has been founded according to the association register on 21 October 1907. EDEKA e.V. is the largest German grocery chain, with EDEKA e.V. being the top body of nine cooperatives and other group companies, such as a bank and wholesale distributors. The EDEKA Community consists of more than 300.000 employees with app. 12.000 locations mainly across Germany and has a market share of app. 26%.
The duration of the association is not restricted to a certain period, but of a long-lasting nature. The object of the association is the legally required auditing of its nine members, the cooperatives, and to be the custodian of the EDEKA brand and thus the group’s representative in all brand related affairs.

According to the latest ranking of Interbrand from February 2012 the brand EDEKA comes in second on the list of the “Germany‘s Most Valuable Retail Brands”.

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