In an earlier ABARE study of the efficiency of seafood marketing (Smith and Reid 1993) it was suggested that alternative marketing arrangements have the potential to improve the efficiency of seafood marketing. Among the options canvassed was the possibility of developing electronic marketing of seafood. Electronic marketing systems may be well suited to the fishing industry's operations, particularly to domestic marketing, where the majority of product is sold in fresh chilled form, requiring the rapid movement of product, and where there are wide variations in both fishing and marketing operations.

Electronic marketing encompasses any form of marketing activity which is undertaken remotely through a computer network. Under an electronic marketing system, buyers and sellers are able to trade by offering or bidding for products through their own computers, networked to a central computer system, recording bids according to a specified sale structure. Such systems allow a large number of buyers and sellers to simultaneously participate in a sale. Electronic marketing systems have been developed and implemented for some agricultural products, such as livestock, but are not widely used at present.

The objective in this project is to identify potential applications of electronic marketing in the fishing industry, some of the likely benefits that may result, and the conditions that would need to be met for these benefits to be realised. Identifying the full extent of the potential benefits and costs of electronic marketing was outside the ambit of this study. The benefits of electronic marketing will vary widely between different user groups, and a full assessment would require detailed information on the current operations of a wide array of potential users. Similarly, the costs will be influenced by the administrative arrangements adopted in establishing the computer network and the technologies used, both of which are subject to considerable uncertainty.