Factors Affecting the Success of Rural Cooperatives in Zanjan Province from Managers Perspective: Application of AHP Method

The main purpose of this study was ranking and assessing factors affecting on the success of rural cooperatives in Zanjan province, Iran. Purposeful proportional stratified sampling was applied to select respondents. For prioritizing factors affecting the success of rural cooperatives in perspective of managers, AHP method was used. Expert Choice Software was used for data analysis. The research findings revealed that appropriate marketing performance, cooperatives and members’ financial power, employees’ education level, managers’ technical skills, amount of participation in cooperative affairs, manager’s human skills and members’ benefit from cooperative, respectively, were the most important internal organizational factors and cooperatives union performance, quality of instructions offered, membership experience, the number of instructional courses offered and knowing the members, were the most external organizational factors on cooperatives success, respectively.