Chain management and marketing performance in fruit industry

The competitiveness of fruit industries, is influenced substantially by the relative performance of the vertical linkages within the supply chain of that industry. This is especially important in regard to how effectively the industry's supply chain serves the needs and preferences of its customers. Superior performance in serving these customer needs can be expected to result in an expanding demand for an industry's products, while lagging performance will likely resulting in loss of demand and market share to competing supply chains of industries in other regions or countries. A supply chain perspective for a fruit industry is needed, quite relevant and useful in analyzing the performance of an industry and how this performance, and hence the industry's competitiveness, can be improved. Industry strategic planning with a supply chain perspective can aid an industry in charting certain kinds of needed strategic directions for a competitive future. With the use of specific examples from U.S. fruit industries, discussion has been included in this paper of how supply chain management of agricultural commodity industries can lead to performance enhancing industry efforts - efforts which can improve the overall competitiveness and economic viability of these industries.