Organizational Efficiency for Quality Reputation - the Case of Gi Banana

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.