Tag: Bananas

Once upon a time, there was a banana company.  After a chequered career using different names, the banana company settled on  a new name, which it has stuck with now for many decades.  That name is Chiquita. For many years Chiquita then focused on its banana business and eventually they thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if we put little Chiquita stickers on every banana leaving our plantations in Honduras, Panama and elsewhere?”  So they did.  Every once in a while they asked themselves the question again, which why one can now buy Chiquita pineapple, Chiquita mangoes and Chiquita ‘god knows what’, depending on which part of the world one lives.  In recent years Chiquita has been asking itself a few other questions which are captured as captions under the three photos that follow.  (Photos taken in Frankfurt, early February 2011)

How About We Take The Chiquita Sticker Into The High Street And Stick It On The Front Door?

What Else Could We Sell Our Adoring Public? Particularly In Winter?

And If We Provide Some Nice Bright Yellow Chairs, We Might Even Sell Some Bananas For Dessert!

The concept employed by Chiquita has a name – brand migration. It is often played at the corporate level and usually with mixed results. Companies engaged in playing the game usually end up learning a few hard lessons such as

• Success depends on consumer perception and not on player desire
• The rules of the game differ between supermarket aisles
• PRODUCT marketing strategies and SERVICE marketing strategies are different beasts altogether

Nevertheless, success can be sweet.  I wonder how long the potato grower queue is who want to discuss supply agreements with Chiquita!?

I would envisage that there will be quite a few entries with that title this year….

Anyway, I went shopping today at my local supermarket and inevitably, came across the banana display. Inevitably?  Well, firstly, its difficult to avoid bananas even in the always colourful produce department and secondly, I am preconditioned to buy bananas whenever I end up in a supermarket.  $2.99 per kilo the ticket said. 

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The Australian ABC network ran a story on low banana prices in late May, stating that grower returns had dropped to A$5 a carton.  The story was picked up by Fresh Plaza, who being Dutchmen, managed to get their geography wrong and announced the story under the headline, “NZ: Bananas going dirt cheap”.  I have no problems with Australia being mistaken to be a part of New Zealand.  I refer to the Land  of OZ as our West Island quite frequently myself. 

The real news in this story is actually not that the Dutch are geographically challenged, but that Australian growers have discovered what to them seems to be a new revalation altogether.

Far North Queensland grower Doug Phillips is being qoted as saying,  he is “still sending fruit to market, but only the pick of the bunch.  We’re only sending the very best of the bunch, we’re not sending any large or mediums. If there’s any marks on it at all it’s getting thrown out.”

Well fancy that.  Australian fruit growers have discovered that one can maintain prices by “only sending the pick of the bunch” to market.  I wonder how long before they trying to patent that highly exciting bit of new knowledge they have gained  and try to sell it to us?