Aquaculture America 2023

February 23 - 26, 2023

New Orleans, Louisiana USA

U.S. RETAIL MARKET TRENDS FOR TILAPIA PRODUCTS

Lianqun Sun*, Carole Engle, Ganesh Kumar, and Jonathan van Senten

Delta Research and Extension Center, Thad Cochran National Warmwater Aquaculture Center, Mississippi State University, Stoneville, Mississippi-38776 USA

 



Tilapia products are the fifthmost sold product in U.S. seafood retail markets. This article focuses on grocery retail sales with special emphasis on tilapia market trends over the last five years by evaluating weekly, store-based ScanTrack scanner data from AC Nielson from September 2016 through August 2021. Results show that tilapia sales have been slightly declining in the retail market, with -1% annual growth rate. Such slightly declining trends were an exception among the top seafood products sold in retail markets such as shrimp, salmon, crab, lobster, and catfish which registered positive annual growth rates in sales. The South Central region is the largest tilapia regional market, followed by the South Atlantic and Pacific regions. Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas/Ft. Worth were the top three city retail markets for tilapia in 2020-2021(Figure 1). The majority (90%) of the tilapia products were sold as non-value added products. Frozen and refrigerated products dominated the retail sales (89%) of which fillets (76%) had the major market share (76%) in terms of sales value. Smaller 454-g packages of tilapia had 38% of the market share among all different package sizes, followed by 1.81-kg with 19%, and 908-g, with 15% revenue share. Fresh tilapia sold in the retail market has declined over the years while frozen tilapia sales have risen, with 9% and 78% market share, respectively in 2020-2021. Tilapia prices remained constant over the study period. An increased understanding of tilapia trends in the retail market would assist in the important development of effective marketing strategies in the United States.