S Group

The S Group (Finnish: S-ryhmä, Swedish: S-gruppen) is a Finnish retailing cooperative organisation with its head office in Helsinki. Founded in 1904, it consists of 22 regional cooperatives operating all around Finland in the markets for groceries, consumer durables, service station, hotel and restaurant services, agricultural supplies, and car sales. The full formal name of the nationwide cooperative organisation is Suomen Osuuskauppojen Keskuskunta (The Central Finnish Cooperative Society) abbreviated as SOK. It is engaged in close competition with Kesko, with which it shares an oligopolistic position in many of the markets it operates in.

The group has businesses in Finland, Estonia and Russia. S Group had businesses in Latvia and Lithuania, but announced withdrawal from these markets in May 2017.

The organisation's loyalty card is called S-Etukortti.

A client can invest a small sum on the local co-operative and become a client-owner. (The exact sum is decided by the local co-operative board and varies significantly depending on local conditions.) A client-owner gets a membership card, S-Etukortti, which functions as a debit or credit card and gives access to special client-owner bargains. For the sums spent in S Group stores, Bonus is paid back to the client into the account at S-Bank. The Bonus percentage varies from 1% to 5% depending on the sum spent. S-Bank pays an interest that is competitive with interests paid by general banks into savings accounts. S-Etukortti is not a regular "loyalty card" as it represents actual monetary investment and the return is formally profit, not discount.