International Journal of Commerce & Business Management

P. G. Dhamotharan ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Agricultural and Rural Management, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, T.N., IN

Abstract

With Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) increasingly influencing trades both at the domestic, national and international level; harnessing trade benefits depends on the degree of protection enjoyed by the owners of the IPRs. Geographical Indications (GI) is one of the six Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that seeks to provide comprehensive and effective protection to goods registered as GI goods. The GI tag attached to products acts as a signaling device that helps producers to differentiate their products from competing products in the market and enables them to build reputation and goodwill around their products, which allows them to fetch a premium price. On this background, the present study was undertaken to analyze the marketing of GI banana in the Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu. The results showed that Channel-I (Producer-Commission agents-Wholesaler- Retailer-Consumer), Channel-II (Producer- Commission agents-Wholesaler-Consumer), Channel-III(Producer-Commission agent- Consumer). The channel I was most favoured channel in the study area as maximum (nearly 50%) quantity was passed through this channel. The producer's share in consumer's rupee was maximum in channel III (65.84%), followed by channel II (55.50%) and channel I (47.18%). The total marketing cost was maximum in channel I (11.24%) and minimum in channel III (7.20%). It was also revealed that the marketing efficiency was higher in Channel-I followed by Channel-II and Channel- III.

Keywords

Geographical Indications, Marketing, Banana

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P. G. Dhamotharan ¹, K. N. Selvaraj ²

Affiliations
1 Department of Agricultural and Rural Management, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, T.N., IN
2 Department of Trade and Intellectual Property, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, T.N., IN

Abstract

Geographical Indications (GI) is one of the six Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that seeks to provide comprehensive and effective protection to goods registered as GI goods. In case of GIs, the community organization is entitled to use registration logo which is dependent on the good cultivation practices adopted by the farmers of the community and efficient marketing of GI products in order to guarantee the quality and reputation of the GI products. Since collective dimension of GIs is the quality control, ensuring the conformity to the product specification in maintaining the quality reputation is depending up on consensus among the members of the community organization. Community Organizations have to play a big role in order to ensure realization of the potential benefits of GIs in terms of quality maintenance under various manifestations such that the whole community gets benefits. The producers expressed many constraints that made them to discontinue cultivation and it is evident that area under hill bananas declined very sharply in recent years despite the fact that the Hill Banana Growers Federation has undertaken many initiatives to revive it. The study results show that many producers are not members of the federation and the task of federation is to enroll all the producers as members in order to maintain the quality attributes for which these bananas are known in the market. Further, to increase the market share of GI banana through demand creations, promotional activities would be vital for which federation role is paramount important.

Keywords

Geographical Indications, Community Organizations, Banana

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