Consumer demand for frozen seafood product categories in the United States

• Published in: Aquaculture economics & management Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 9 - 24
• Main Authors: Surathkal, Prasanna, Dey, Madan M., Engle, Carole R., Chidmi, Benaissa, Singh, Kehar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Taylor & Francis 02.01.2017; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome; Aggregates; AIDS; Almost ideal demand system; Categories; consumer demand; Consumers; Demand; Demographic variables; Demographics; Economic models; Expenditures; Genetic transformation; Longitudinal studies; Marketing; Markets; panel data; product differentiation; Products; Retail stores; scanner data; Seafood; Seafoods; Shellfish; Temporal variations; United States; United States > US; USA
• ISSN: 1365-7305; 1551-8663
• DOI: 10.1080/13657305.2017.1265020

Frozen seafood marketing in grocery stores in the United States (U.S.) has undergone substantial transformation as a result of the introduction of value-added and convenience products into the category. However, it is not yet clear whether consumers perceive these value-added products to be substitutes for the traditional unbreaded products. We model the demand for frozen seafood in the United States using the linear approximate almost ideal demand system (LA-AIDS) employing market-level monthly retail scanner panel data. Our emphasis is on the demand relationships between the three aggregate frozen seafood categories, namely, breaded products, entrées and unbreaded products, and on the demand relationships for these categories when disaggregated as finfish and shellfish. We use fixed effects on the spatial and temporal variation in demand and incorporated demographic shifter variables. Our results show that unbreaded products, as compared to value-added categories of breaded seafood and seafood entrées, would gain market share if expenditure on frozen seafood increases. We also find that unbreaded products are stronger substitutes for value-added products than vice versa. We explore similar relationships between frozen shellfish and finfish products. Unbreaded shellfish can be expected to gain market share if expenditure on frozen seafood were to increase.