Blood Bananas

Group 3
What is the Essence of the Case?
• “With this in mind, Fernando Aguirre, Chiquita’s CEO since 2004,
reflected on how the company had arrived at this point, and what had
been done to correct the course so far. He faced major challenges to
the company’s competitive position in this dynamic industry. What
would it take to position the company on a more positive competitive
trajectory? Would this even be possible in this industry and in the
business climate Chiquita faced? “
PESTLE Analysis
• Political: The Power of the Government should force a transparency and reduce the activities of
these kind of group from threatening businesses by providing them with the needed Security.
This will in turn reduce the level of corruption.  
• Economic: The Government should find the alternate means of jobs through trade policies for
the workforce to reduce the income inequality which majorly depended on exporting bananas
in such that they it posed a threat of causing instability in their economy.
• Social: The Main reason for the evolution extremism is the social inequality, this fundamentally
eliminated/atleast reduced by introducing policy measures.
• Legal: The Legal system should be strengthened to enable seamless operations for the
businesses are operating in Columbia.
• Environment: The Government should step and try to imitate what Chiquita had done to
overtake and bring everything to work in their lands, it involves phasing out toxic pesticides,
building warehouses to store chemicals, maintain water quality, and other recycling programs.
Value Chain Analysis: Primary activities
• Inbound logistics:
• The inbound logistics for Blood Bananas Chiquita in Colombia are its
producers in the different locations
• The Environment Prep that Chiquita had to do to its 127 farms to maintain its
quality.
• Operations
• Chiquita operates internationally, the company has owned shops across
different countries selling its products.
Value Chain Analysis: Primary activities
• Outbound logistics:
• They had made investments that resulted in the development of
technological innovations in production, shipping, and marketing.
•  Marketing and sales
• It invested in a high level of customer servicing and marketing by
defining the standards of the produce.
Value Chain Analysis: Primary activities
• Service
• The invested in remaining agile in a competitive, fast-paced
marketplace that is characterized by growing consumer expectations.
Value Chain Analysis : Support activities
•  Infrastructure
• This includes different departments like management, finance, legal, etc.
which are required to keep the company’s business running in Columbia.
• Human resource management
• Continuous growth and development of our employees was the key
to their success.
• Technology development
• Chiquita invested in technology for production, shipping, and marketing.
What is our Stand?
• Chiquita “...could have left Colombia, but it made a business decision to stay. For Chiquita to
say it had no choice but to be, quote, ‘a victim’ of extortion for years while it reaped the
profits of those Colombian operations ... does not stand any legitimate scrutiny.”

• We stand by this statement as we perceive from the case all the efforts done by Chiquita
majorly contributed to its profits more the welfare of the company,
• With the history of that bottom fishing that it comes from, it hard to believe that they did it
for their employees or really for the economy
• Although they did have an option of that they could have brought this and escalated the issue
to a national level, considering the sensitivity of the situation,
• Worst case they could have left country adhering to their integrity values defined. Also, it is
the right thing to do, a business cannot operate for long under unethical practices, it sets a
wrong precedence and creates other domino effects
Recommendations
• The Government fundamentally let the companies exploit the profit
out of the country, they should reinforce power and create a business
operable environment for the companies to operate.
• Chiquita should reflect their core values in the actions that they
perform anymore,
• And they should operate with full transparency, considering the
sensitivity of the issue and the kind of threat it can trigger.