Typologie des coopératives de crédit espagnoles par la méthode des groupes stratégiques. Une étude empirique

The objective is to apply the Strategic Groups approach to the sub-sector of credit cooperatives, organizations on which Strategic Groups analysis has not been applied yet although they are part of the banking sector. Therefore taking into account the theoretical arguments presented on SG, the authors apply them according to the following stages: identification of the group of banking organizations composing the object of the study (in this case, credit cooperatives) while analysing their main characteristics; choice of the subset of banking organizations forming the analysed sample; determination of key strategic variables to define credit cooperatives' strategies; and application of the research methodology using factorial Analysis in conjunction with Cluster Analysis, in order to identify the strategic groups forming the subset of credit cooperatives in Spain. Contrarily to what happened in other European countries where cooperative banks have an important place in the banking system, the strategic divergences between the different types of credit cooperatives hinder the integration of this sector in Spain. This strategic weakness calls for adoption of cooperation strategies by the different types of existing credit cooperatives.