Callander McDowell
Callander McDowell
reLAKSation no 408
Who to believe?: Last week, we, at Callander McDowell, visited a local Morrison’s store to monitor their week long salmon promotion. The UK store group has salmon fillet on half price promotion and helped by TV advertising, the offer appeared very popular. In fact, it was proving so popular, that the fish counter of our local store had an enormous gap in their fish display where the salmon fillet had been. The store had sold out of all its salmon. Consumers still wanting to buy salmon had to consider buying something else instead.
…and so will US consumers if all the reports of Chilean shortages prove to be true. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to know what to believe any more with regard to Chilean salmon, since there are so many hyped up reports floating around the media.
The most reported is the news from Bloomberg.com that Wal-Mart Stores has stopped buying salmon from Chile due to reduced harvests resulting from the ISA problem. Bloomberg report that Wal-Mart have switched to ‘Atlantic’ suppliers of salmon after the fish became unavailable.
Yet, within a couple of days of this report, Wal-Mart told IntraFish that they were still buying some farmed salmon from Chile but due to recent events, there is only a limited supply. Consequently, Wal-Mart is looking at alternative supplies so they can continue to serve their customers and offer them the products they are looking for. Whether this is high priced salmon from Europe is another question. Wal-Mart’s UK business, Asda, is well known for its competitive prices. Asda’s current tag line is ‘Saving you money every day’. Presumably, Wal-Mart’s pricing ethos runs through all their stores and thus whether their customers are willing to pay a lot more for their salmon is doubtful. Wal-Mart told Bloomberg that they hadn’t increased prices ‘at the current time’.
The confusion as to whether Wal-Mart is selling Chilean salmon in the US extends all the way to Chile. According to IntraFish, SalmonChile, the Chilean salmon industry’s representative organisation has said that none of their member companies have sold any salmon for more than a year. Even then, Wal-Mart was never considered to be a major buyer of Chilean salmon, thus the story that has appeared in several newspapers, say SalmonChile, is untrue.
It is not really of any surprise to us at Callander McDowell that there is this confusion about what is happening in the marketplace. Just because Wal-Mart has not bought salmon directly from Chile, does not mean that it isn’t selling any. This is because they are buying through at least one independent processor. Our research has shown that Chilean salmon is currently available in Wal-Mart and it is sold under the label of ‘Consolidated Catfish’ of Isola Mississippi.
Whether selling salmon under the label ‘Consolidated Catfish’ will confuse consumers about what they are buying is of course, a very different question?
Confusing consumers!: This week, BBC showed an hour long TV programme entitled ‘What’s really in our food’. The programme was not so much about what’s in the food we eat but rather that consumers may be being misled by some of the labelling. This is because there is a conflict between the need for accurate information and that of the marketing department. The overall conclusion was that most food is correctly labelled in line with current legislation but that the implications drawn from the label may be morally wrong. On example was the use of the term ‘Great British Menu’ which the makers of the programme thought implied that all the ingredients were of British origin whereas even the product was made outside the UK.
The programme also looked at cases of criminal fraud, which they found has increased with the changing economic climate. One case that received a brief mention but subsequently achieved extensive press coverage concerned a fish and chip shop that was recently prosecuted for passing off pangasius as cod.
Many fish and chip shops describe their offering as ‘fish’ on the menu and make no claims about its origin, and so can sell pangasius, although there is the argument that it should really be described as what it is. If the fish is described as cod and then customers are served pangasius, then it is clearly misrepresentation and the owner should be prosecuted. In the UK, such prosecutions are brought by ‘Trading Standards’, who are responsible for ensuring that consumers are not misled.
What caught our eye was that the Trading Standards Officer who brought the prosecution covered by the press said on the TV programme that the offending fish and chip shop was caught selling a ‘Korean’ catfish called panga–sea-us. Obviously, this Trading Standards Officer had made strenuous efforts to ensure the accuracy of his case!
One reader of the Times newspaper wrote in a forum that ‘Trading Standards’ should have been more alert to this fraud given that the name of the fish and chip shop was ‘CAT hill FISH bar’. The Times also helpfully provided an illustration of both cod and chips and pangasius and chips.
Under-marketing: Our previous comment on the so-called Norwegian over-production produced a number of responses arguing that 15% growth in Norway is over-production whichever way one looks at it and that no matter how much marketing effort is made, it will never expand the market sufficiently to absorb the extra fish produced.
To some extent we might agree. However, we have repeatedly argued marketing is not an instant solution and that wider investment in marketing should have begun long ago and if not now then when?
Equally, it is important to remember that marketing is not just about advertising and promotion as they are just part of the marketing mix. Marketing is about producing the right product, at the right price for the right market and to do so profitably. Norway has been fortunate that Chilean supply has declined sufficiently to ensure that all this production will find a ready market at high prices. Without Chile, prices may have crashed due to the extra fish, but equally, lower priced fish would have stimulated demand. It is too easy to forget that many consumers just want a value for money healthy to eat, meal choice. The current situation may yet price such consumers out of the market and that might just damage the market in the longer term.