reLAKSation 353. Callander McDowell
Price wars: Our local branch of Sainsbury’s supermarket has put pallets of fruit and vegetables next to the store entrance. All are offered at half price. The tabloid newspapers are full of adverts in which the supermarkets compete to prove they offer the best value. Even the broadsheet newspapers have had comments and subsequent letters discussing whether the discounters such as Aldi and Lidl offer the best value. Whilst supermarkets have regularly offered half price deals on salmon fillets, the reality is that the salmon is rarely offered at the full listed price and the half price deals usually place the price around the standard price. Now Asda have fired the first shot in offering salmon fillet from their fresh fish counter at nearly half price with a price of £4/kg (NOK40/kg, €5/kg).
Forecasters are predicting salmon prices will rise in line with a general trend of rising food prices. However, the supermarkets are starting to wage war to see who can offer the best value. Will their action exert pressure on salmon prices and keep prices low? Only time will tell but what is clear is that with financial pressure from every side, consumers are looking to cut their weekly food budget and will avoid those products that they consider will squeeze their budgets.
Not our words: During one of our regular supermarket visits as part of our retail survey, we noticed that the salmon on offer on one fresh fish counter was different to that normally stocked. We enquired about the salmon and the response was that ‘it was the same as their usual salmon but just from a different supplier’. In case we had misheard, the question was repeated in another store and we received the same answer as we did on a repeat visit to the same store the next day.
Our experience sprung to mind after reading an interview with Nick Joy of Loch Duart Salmon in the latest issue of the ‘IntraFish Business’ newspaper. Mr Joy told the paper that:
“The Scottish industry has managed to succeed despite scant marketing knowledge or wherewithal. ‘I’m very proud of Scotland and what it does, but I think Scottish salmon sells itself very badly’ Joy says. ‘It’s a classic British attitude: We’re going to make the best product we possibly can and spare no expense doing it. But once producers get to market and someone asks what makes their fish different, they get all coy and uncomfortable and say, ‘Oh, it’s just farmed salmon like any other.’
Of course, by now you’ve probably guessed that the salmon in question is Loch Duart salmon, which is being sold in just twenty one Sainsbury’s stores.
The appearance of Loch Duart salmon in Sainsbury’s was something of a surprise since Mr Joy also told IntraFish Business that ‘Too many people think the only route to making money off Scottish salmon is in the multiples however, it isn’t the only route and I don’t think it’s the best.’
We, at Callander McDowell, have a lot of respect for Nick Joy and what he has achieved at Loch Duart. Whilst other Scottish producers have whinged and whined about unfair competition, Mr Joy and his colleagues have shown that it is possible for Scottish salmon farming to be profitable, even when times are tough. As a result, they are an internationally recognised company and have been presented with many accolades and awards, the latest being Aquaculture Supplier of the Year at the Scottish Aquaculture Awards 2008.
Mr Joy is also always open and forthright and it is refreshing to read his words that perhaps Scottish salmon is not marketed as well as it could be. We have always argued that the long standing trade dispute with Norway is the result of Scotland’s failure to give sufficient attention to marketing. What Mr Joy describes is the typical production-led approach adopted by the Scottish industry with the expectation that consumers will not only buy Scottish salmon, but they will pay a premium price for it, because as it is Scottish it must be the best.
The problem is that it is not enough to say that Scottish salmon is best as consumers need to know why, especially since most are unlikely to be able to differentiate one piece of salmon from another. This is a problem that might even extend to Loch Duart salmon despite Mr Joy’s best efforts. Mr Joy is certainly well able to articulate about how good his salmon is. Unfortunately, Mr Joy cannot be present every time a consumer buys a piece of his salmon, he has to rely on others and this is where the ability to pass on the ‘story’ can fall down. This was very much the case when we asked about Loch Duart salmon in Sainsbury’s. The response showed that the message had not really been passed on and it wasn’t just down to the shop floor staff as a manager became involved in one response and the information was just as poor. It is fortunate for Mr Joy that Loch Duart salmon is being sold instead of Sainsbury’s usual salmon offerings and not in parallel since consumers would have a very hard time understanding the difference between the two.
To be fair to Mr Joy, Sainsbury’s have not made it easy. One of the unique selling points of Loch Duart salmon has been the Freedom Food welfare standard. However, as can be seen from the labelling used in Sainsbury’s this is not apparent (see above).
In fact, the only information provided is the name Loch Duart salmon so it is not surprising that the staff are not better informed. However, since June, Sainsbury’s have been selling their own Freedom Food welfare standard salmon, both in chilled form and from the fresh fish counter. The labelling used incorporates the Freedom Food logo so making customers aware of the higher welfare standards used in the farming of their salmon.
It would now seem that the unique selling points that have given Loch Duart an advantage in the marketplace may no longer be unique. It is not only Sainsbury’s that are selling responsibly farmed, higher welfare sustainable salmon. Marks & Spencers have their Lochmuir salmon which is also now grown to Freedom Food standards and the Coop that have their own responsibly farmed label. In addition Waitrose have their Select Farm label which applies their own set of standards. According to Freedom Food, over 50% of the salmon grown in Scotland is produced under their label so what was once a novelty is now becoming the norm.
The problem of passing the ‘marketing story’ down the supply chain is not unique to supermarkets. From time to time, our own staff have eaten at restaurants serving Loch Duart salmon and have always asked the question as to what is Loch Duart salmon? The response has always been a bit vague with either mention of Freedom Foods, fast flowing waters or low stocking densities as to what makes Loch Duart special. Some restaurants provide information on the menu which is helpful and ensures that the story is told correctly. The sushi bar Moshi Moshi is one such restaurant which provides information about Loch Duart as does Loch Fyne restaurants, but others are not so helpful, such as those owned by Gordon Ramsay.
It could be argued that it doesn’t really matter if the story is not related correctly as the success is getting the salmon into restaurants like Gordon Ramsay and supermarkets like Sainsbury’s. As the consumer is not actually given a choice, other than take it or leave it, then it doesn’t make any difference. However, if the consumer has heard negative stories about farmed salmon, then the choice might be to order a different dish or the supermarket shopper to buy a different species so getting the story right is important, if for nothing else, then simply to further enhance the name. After all, with so much other salmon now claiming similar credentials, the challenge is on from Mr Joy to make sure his salmon remains unique.
Does size matter?: Seafoodintelligence.com reported on preliminary findings of the two and a half year ‘mmmmmseafood’ project with ten partners in three Nordic countries. The project is aimed at boosting seafood consumption in Denmark, Norway and Iceland. The project operated a number of focus groups which asked the public about their fish consumption.
The initial findings suggest that consumers want to eat more fish, especially as they are aware of the health benefits, but they were deterred from doing so by poor access to quality fish, their inability to judge good fish, their own cooking skills and the high price of fish.
However, the most interesting response from consumers was that fresh fish counters tend to be much smaller that the meat counter when in the past this was not always so. This has led the researchers to conclude that consumers are not buying fish because fish and seafood products are not visible in supermarkets. We, at Callander McDowell, would disagree.
We appreciate that supermarkets in Iceland, Norway and Denmark are different to those in the UK, but fish consumption in the UK is also relatively low and attempts are also being made to encourage increased consumption here. Many of the obstacles to fish consumption are similar in the Nordic countries and the UK.
Fish counters in UK supermarkets are also relatively small in comparison to other service counters. They always have been. Before the rise of the supermarkets, most fish was sold by independent fishmongers. Now the supermarkets sell most fish as shoppers have turned to the convenience of buying all their shopping under one roof. Modern supermarkets are very large in size and it is unlikely that shoppers walk up and down every aisle. Most shoppers know what they want to buy and just visit the aisles stocking those products. If they don’t usually buy something then they usually don’t go looking for it. For example, a member of the public who doesn’t own a dog is unlikely to go shopping for dog food and thus will avoid the aisles selling pet foods. The store may have a fantastic offer on dog food, but if customers don’t visit the dog food aisle, then they will be never even see the offer. In exactly the same way, shoppers who never eat fish will never make any effort to visit the fish counter. It doesn’t matter whether the fish counter is small or twice as big as any other counter, if there is no intention to even buy fish, then the way the fish counter looks will have little influence over the shopper.
If it was just a matter of ‘visibility’, then the British supermarket chain Morrison’s would be expected to sell most fresh fish in the UK retail market. Morrison’s are unusual because unlike other supermarkets, they have tried to recreate a market shopping experience with a variety of little stalls located around the internal perimeter of the store. These stalls include a butcher, baker, hot pie shop, a deli, a fishmonger a salad bar, etc, of which the fishmonger is nearly always sited right next to the store entrance. Shoppers cannot miss seeing the fishmongers because they have to walk right past it, yet Morrisons’s do not sell the most fish of all British supermarkets. Of course, there are other factors to take into account such as numbers of stores, location, etc but even so, Morrison’s are not the UK’s leading fishmongers. Visibility is not the overriding factor.
We, at Callander McDowell, have always argued that size doesn’t matter but rather the way that marketing is used that matters. If shoppers don’t visit the fish counter then the fish counter, or parts of it, need to be brought to the shoppers. Many shoppers like the idea of seeing fish counters but seemingly they are not prepared to buy from them. As the ‘mmmmmseafood’ researchers found, fish is alien to many consumers. They don’t know what to buy or what to do with it if they did.
What is required is a different approach where fish products are displayed where consumers least expect to see them and in formats with which they are more familiar. In the previous comment, Nick Joy seemed to suggest that producers and suppliers are rightly proud of their produce but equally, they sometimes forget that this passion is viewed by the public with much less enthusiasm. What is needed is to think more of the consumer than the product. As we have discussed many times before this is about adopting a much more market-led approach and then producing what consumers actually want.
Fish counters offer shoppers a visual treat with displays of many varied fish species but to many shoppers they are just a display. The size of the fish counter is not what matters but rather what is done with it that counts!