Analyzing Competition for a Web Portal

Abstract

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO, 2005), organic agriculture (OA) is “a holistic production management system which promotes and enhances agro-ecosystem health, including biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity.” In recent years, the rapid evolution of the Internet has given the opportunity to create a large number of Web sites, Web portals, and other information resources concerning OA (for the remainder of this article, we will refer to them as OA information resources). The ultimate goal behind these attempts has been the dissemination of information to farmers, traders, agriculturists, consumers, and even children, and the provision of specialised services on OA. This has lead to a plethora of Web-based information systems and inevitably, has created the need for a detailed analysis on the positioning of a new Web portal regarding OA before proceeding to design and implementation. Dibb et al. (Dibb, Simkin, Pride, & Ferrel, 2007) define positioning as “the process of creating an image for a product in the minds of target customers.”