Marketing of Geographical Indications (GIs) Banana in Dindigul District of Tamil Nadu

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.