- Division of Marine Fisheries
DMF’s Seafood Marketing Program provided Dr. Joshua Weirsma and Michael Carroll a grant last year to develop and implement a consumer preference survey to better understand the value of local haddock and traceability labels. Local retailers and others were interested in exploring pilot programs for “fully traceable” local haddock but needed more information from the consumer about their demand for this type of program, fish species, and new traceability labels that would allow digital transparency and new information about the location, method, and date of harvest.
A survey was designed to capture consumer preferences. By implementing the survey in person (at grocery stores and other retail seafood locations), the project was able to collect a small but robust set of 118 completed surveys from the target audience of consumers who frequently purchase seafood at retail establishments, who like (and purchase) white fish, and who are the primary shopper in the family. The results showed that consumers have different preferences for attributes of a seafood label (e.g. vessel name, gov’t record, landings date), and were willing to switch the purchase of white fish species (in this case towards haddock) if it had their ideal traceability label. Furthermore, on average, consumers were willing to pay about 8 percent more per pound for their ‘ideal traceability label’; and consumers who shop at more high-end grocery stores (e.g. Wholefoods and Wegmans) are willing to pay even more per pound.
By Julia Kaplan, Communications Specialist
