A strong Australian food industry is vital to both food security and a strong economy, with the food industry currently worth over A$110 billion annually and over 15% of Australians employed throughout the food value chain. As stated in the National Food Plan ‘Growing international and domestic food markets will create substantial opportunities for competitive and productive food businesses in Australia.’ And further ‘Global food demand will shift in coming years to higher value and more protein rich foods like meat.’

For the Australian Seafood industry to remain competitive and grow, seafood industry marketers not only need to know how to market seafood but will benefit from a broader understanding of how to market food more generally and an understanding of where seafood ‘sits’ in food marketing. By addressing food more broadly and covering a wide range of food sectors (including meat, dairy, horticulture etc) seafood marketers will be able to identify strategies and tactics used by other food industries globally and in Australia that may be applied to seafood marketing. The purpose of the proposed (Sea)Food Marketing course is to build on the knowledge and expertise gained throughout the ASCRC to develop a University accredited course in Food Marketing with specialised content in seafood marketing. It is estimated that seafood specific content would be between 20 to 30 percent of the course.

The proposed course will be available in postgraduate business programs (MBA, Master of Management, Master of International Business and nested graduated certificates and graduate diplomas); as a single course for credit; and in addition a not for credit version of the course will be developed.

At undergraduate level, introductory marketing courses focus on descriptions of theory and application and it is not until advanced level marketing courses that the focus changes to look at strategy and its implementation. At postgraduate business level, given the work experience requirements of many programs, a greater focus on applying theory to real world situations at higher levels is evident. The proposed course is at postgraduate level and will have a strong focus on strategy and decision making and the allocation of resources across the elements of the marketing mix, with the ultimate aim of having students develop a strategy and an implementation plan for a food product (with the formal assessment focussing on these outcomes).

The proposed course will include a series of case studies and lessons learnt vignettes (as per the attached table) that will address two of the extension opportunities identified by Jayne Gallagher and Emily Mantilla at the Seafood Hub meeting in April. These resources will be designed so that they can be used as 'stand alone' for other purposes (eg short courses, VET training).

As part of the formal university accreditation process for a new course, a rationale including evidence of demand must be presented and is considered by committes at both Faculty and Univeristy level before a course can be approved. Hence formal university approval of the course is based on the rational and so is a Go/ NO GO point for the project. For this proposal the formal pathway is the end of September (so aligned with the first Milestone).