Marketing Aquaculture Products — 1

Marketing and product development. Marketing
and product development go hand-inhand.
As you work with your clients and suppliers,
if you don’t have your head completely
buried in the sand, you will notice things your
customers like and dislike or fi nd awkward
about your product. Most producers whether
they are making aspirin, growing corn or producing
shrimp continually work to perfect their
product off ering. Th e best producers take this
a step further by aggressively seeking the best
product and practices to produce it. Here are a
few thoughts on that subject.
Best Practices. No organization can improve
all aspects of product development at once, but
big companies devote a lot of time and money
to do just that. You as a small producer can
learn from their eff orts. For this reason, the
Internet and the business section of your local
book store have volumes of information on best
practices. For the small aquaculture producer,
there are a few key things that one can learn.
First and foremost, it is important to understand
that the implementation of any productdevelopment
or best-practices strategy is best
viewed as a journey. It is about continuing
process improvement rather than an immediate
destination that is right around the corner.
Any exception to this is the operation that is
really messed up or in need of an immediate
fi x or you are just starting out. Perhaps, for
example, you spent most of your life in another
profession, retired and just purchased a trout
farm as a later-in-life second career. It is time
to develop a quality-control and product-development
plan. Th e best way to do that is have it
revolve around the best operational practices
for your business.
Most large manufacturers look at a number of
priorities when implementing best practices
for product development. For example, these
may include: business and product strategy;
product and pipeline management; technology
management; management and leadership;
early involvement; product development teams;
organizational environment, process management,
process improvement; understanding
the customer; requirements and specifi cations
management; product launch; product cost
management; support technology; and knowledge
management.
So what can a small aquaculture producer take
away from this? If you look at the previous list,
it will probably become apparent that many
of these points are important aspects of the
marketing plan we developed. Th ere is overall
business and product strategy, an understanding
of our customer’s wants and needs, and
then product management. Th is is another way
of saying, “quality control and best practices
related to it.” Th is is extremely important in
any food-production operation.
Th e organization must start by understanding
what practices should be adopted. Th is is essentially
what is possible. Next it must consider
its strategic direction. Th is means what best
practices can help us achieve the best time-tomarket,
lowest production costs, and make us
the most innovative producer with the highest
quality product. Our reliability as a producer
and fl exibility to respond with new product
off erings for new markets, is icing on the cake.
Best practices almost ensure that you will have
agility to respond to new market opportunities.
Any best practices strategy means that the organization
has assessed its strengths and weaknesses.
Th e weak areas constitute the most
immediately recognizable “gap” between where
a company is and where it needs to be. Th is is
what is frequently called a GAP analysis, and
it does not have to be involved or extensive to
point toward priorities that can be determined
for immediate improvement and positive
change.
Best practices are easily organized into a frame-
Marketing Aquaculture Products — 17