Pond Dynamics/Aquaculture CRSP Aquanews ~ Summer 2002

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Marketing Research in Latin America

by Carole R. Engle and Ivano Neira, Aquaculture/Fisheries Center, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff

everal studies were funded under the Tenth Work Plan to extend the results of the marketing surveys that were carried out in Honduras and in Nicaragua as part of the Ninth Work Plan.

Discrete choice logit models are under development with data from each of the six Ninth Work Plan surveys to identify the effects of consumer attitudes and sociodemographic characteristics on binary choice variables related to either sales of tilapia or willingness to add tilapia to the product or menu line. For example, the logit analysis of the Nicaraguan restaurant survey data evaluated the factors that affect the probability that a given restaurant was selling tilapia as well as the probability that a restaurant that was not selling tilapia would add it to its menu.

University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff graduate student Ivano Neira interviews a restaurant owner in León city, Nicaragua.
From this analysis, the most promising restaurant markets for tilapia farmers appear to be older restaurants that offer a variety of different types of food on the menu and those that served steaks. Larger restaurants that considered tilapia to be a high-quality product and that offered ceviche on the menu were those that tended to sell tilapia. Restaurateurs’ experiences with off-flavor and poor quality tilapia were cited as reasons for not selling tilapia.

Those variables that emerge
Guapote, Cichlasoma managuense, a freshwater cichlid native to Nicaragua that is a popular finfish; some restaurants substitute guapote with tilapia.
as most significant across the surveys will be used to design a short, rapid market assessment tool. This tool will be tested in Mexico and in Peru. Raymundo Sury, under the supervision of Wilfrido Contreras-Sánchez of the Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, Mexico, will carry out the testing in Mexico while the work in Peru will be done in collaboration with Fernando Alcantara, host country principal investigator for Peru based at the Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana.

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