Introduction: A Banana Is Not Just a Banana
Anyone who has ever been a consumer is aware of the basic concept of positioning within the field of marketing. Product positioning refers not to a physical place occupied by the product but rather a psychological one: Positioning can be defined as the psychological place that a company's product occupies in the minds of consumers and potential consumers. Positioning entails all the processes that a company must undertake to ensure that when a consumer thinks of athletic shoes - or bananas or laptops - your company's name is the one that comes to mind. The ability to position one's brand in the mind of potential consumers is always a challenge for a company and is especially challenging when the product is a trendy one. This paper examines the ways in which one company - the Dole Corporation - has tried to position its one of its products (bananas) so that it can increase its competitive share in the marketplace.
When it comes to bananas, Dole has long been at a disadvantage. The U.S.-based Dole is association at least for most Americans with pineapples and with various shady dealings in Hawai'i. If you want to go bananas, you go to Chiquita. Chiquita is Dole's major competitor at least in terms of banana sales (it is not a significant competitor in terms of pineapples, for example) and the two companies have clearly tried in recent years to differentiate themselves from each other so as to grab a larger share of the market. This is difficult for the two companies to do because - without meaning to disparage the curving yellow fruit that nutritionists and kids both find to be close to the perfect food - what both companies are selling is basically the same.
What Dole and Chiquita have had to do, as a result (as would any two other companies in their situation) is to try to find a way to convince the public that their products really aren't the same after all.
The structure of a ma...