Aquaculture America 2020

February 9 - 12, 2020

Honolulu, Hawaii

QUALITY DIFFERENTIATION IN THE ATLANTIC SALMON INDUSTRY: BARRIERS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Andreea L. Cojocaru *, Audun Iversen, Ragnar Tveterås
 
 
Department of Innovation, Management and Marketing, Business School, University of Stavanger, Stavanger 4036, Norway
andreea.cojocaru@uis.no
 

The value chain for farmed salmon has experienced tremendous growth over the past  decades as a result of innovation in production technology, logistics, distribution and marketing. The high level of control over the production environment in principle makes it possible for Atlantic salmon to be tailored  on a number of  dimensions in response to requirements from different  customer groups in the supply chain. However, when compared to meat production, differentiation in farmed salmon is in its infancy.  Based on interviews with Norwegian producers, we outline the character and degree of differentiation at each stage in the value chain today and explore  opportunities and barriers  for further differentiation . Harvesting and primary processing of farmed Atlantic salmon generally result in a relatively homogeneous product. Differentiation is to a degree based on physical properties, which limits the range of product development and differentiation towards consumers,  concomitantly impacting the possibility for upstream producers to increase their value creation.  Opportunities for differentiation are greater in B2B marketing than in B2 C marketing, as the former allows salmon companies to offer differentiated value to customers o n several dimensions, such as contracts, certifications, traceability and guarantees related to e.g. volumes, timing of deliveries, feed ingredients, production practices and environmental impact. Salmon is also sold on provenance, but being largely uniform, the claims of uniqueness  may be difficult to substantiate. This study presents an overview of the prominent differentiation strategies today, as well as a clarification  of limitations and prospects for further value creation through differentiation. Throughout, we offer a means for ranking quality dimensions and propose an index of the degree of differentiation at each step in the Atlantic salmon value chain.

Keywords: aquaculture , salmon , differentiation