The Harvard Coop will soon provide members with an immediate discount on purchases in place of the annual rebate the store has offered since 1882.

“The Coop is finalizing a shift to an upfront discount for paid-up members as opposed to a back-end rebate,” Coop President Jeremiah P. Murphy '73 wrote in an email to The Crimson.

This year, Coop members received rebate checks along with a note detailing that the discount will become effective at the start of fiscal year on June 29, 2014.

Murphy said that the change stems from the findings of extensive surveys, which suggested that Coop members would prefer to receive an upfront markdown rather than wait until the store determines rebates at the end of each year.

“We did some focus groups and what we really got out of those focus groups was that people really don’t know what they want the Coop to be in 10 years or 15 years,” said Cody R. Dean ’14, a member of the Coop Board of Directors. “But there were some small things that we could do to make it a little more relevant or a little more convenient without losing the tradition that the Coop has built for many hundreds of years now.”

Dean said that while the exact number has not been decided upon yet, the member discount will likely fall within the range of past rebate rates. However, while past rebate percentages have varied year to year, Dean said that the discount will likely be a fixed rate.

The member rebate has occupied a central role in the Coop’s structure since the organization’s founding in the late nineteenth century by a group of students and University professors who hoped to offer an alternative to the high prices offered elsewhere in Harvard Square.