Marketing Aquaculture Products — 1

or re-tooling; early supplier involvement to
ensure compatibility with process capabilities
and timely fl ow of needed components; and
data management systems to control product,
workfl ow and similar information.
Ideally the product development process is
improved by applying a best practices outlook
to those strategic levers that can be improved
for the best impact. Big companies use GAP
analysis to focus attention on the improvement
opportunities that will yield the highest
payoff . Categories with low importance ratings
and relatively high performance ratings indicate
low priority areas not deserving as much
attention. Th at is probably beyond the scope of
our discussion here, but there is ample material
on GAP analysis in your public library or on
the Internet. Your local extension agricultural
business-development professional may be
available to help with this too.
In a nutshell, you talk with as many people as
possible involved in your supplier-productionconsumer
supply chain, get their ideas and
incorporate that input into key considerations
to keep in mind when producing or marketing
your product, or a list of to do items to immediately
implement some of the ideas. Th e
overall idea is to pick a manageable number of
things to improve and on which to focus your
attention and use individual best practices to
improve these strategic levers. You may want to
try to incorporate this concept into a Strategic
Alignment section of your business or marketing
plan. Big companies nail this down with
what is called implementation planning. Th is
usually takes the form of an implementation
plan that spells out the direction of the activities
followed by a project deployment plan that
is the who-what, when-where action plan. Th is
more formal approach may be applicable for
medium- to large-scale aquaculture producers,
especially if they are considering a new-product
development initiative or introducing product
into an entirely new market.
Marketing Aquaculture Products — 19