2010/769 Master Class Series: Stimulating consumption of Australian seafood

By Dawn Birch, Meredith Lawley and Nick Danenberg

The Seafood CRC now 'owns' the most up-to-date and extensive research data on how and why consumers purchase and consume seafood, gathered through a variety of projects including Repositioning Australian Farmed Barramundi, the Omnibus Surveys and the Retail Transformation project to name a few. The challenge was to communicate this knowledge, and more importantly to help firms to apply this knowledge to achieve improved returns.

This project was an Education and Training project with a key purpose being the dissemination of consumer research findings from other CRC projects. This project allowed for wider dissemination by not only relying on face-to-face delivery but also developing an online resources equivalent.

A Master Class was developed and delivered to a total of 92 participants in 9 locations nationally. Immediately after the workshop 96.8% (n = 31) of those who attended evaluated them as good or very good. Those who evaluated the workshop 1 to 8 months after completion reported a range of outcomes including improved sales, improved profitability and improved relationships with customers. Key themes of the workshop were also captured for online delivery as "FishBites". These are housed on the CRC website with tracking figures to date indicating 336 people have accessed these files.