It has been acknowledged that the seafood industry is facing increased threats. Thus, the industry needs to attract more people to eat more seafood and on a more regular basis. To do this requires that the industry completely understand and anticipate what consumers value and demand, so that it can take advantage of changing consumer dietary preferences. Therefore, the industry will be better able to add value to seafood products to fulfil this demand, which will ultimately improve the industry’s profitability.

Therefore, there is a need for the seafood industry as a whole to:

• track seafood consumption—over time; more regularly; with complete geographical coverage of all major Australian cities; with greater coverage of all demographic groups; and using a panel of participants to measure real changes in their consumption and what caused such changes;
• understand consumers’ preferences and purchase patterns (and the changes over time), including light- and non-seafood buyers;
• focus on what consumers do, and the choices that they make, rather than just on what they say they will do;
• anticipate and predict chances of success for new products, including messages to do with concepts such as eco-labelling, health claims, sustainability, animal welfare, food miles, quality rating system, freshness index and so on. Ideally, this is done early in the R&D process, before too much money and resources have been spent, or where there is a risk of visible (and damaging) market failure;
• assess the effectiveness of promotional activities;
• build on the previous work of the FRDC in testing and quantifying various recommendations of these reports, especially those related to adding value to products (e.g., deboning fillets and ready-to-heat options);
• better estimate the likely market acceptance (e.g., willingness to pay, market share and differential segment response) of value added innovations.

There is a need to:

1. Develop low value Australian seafood options in order to give the Australian seafood consumer the chance to purchase local seafood at accessible price points.

2. Evaluate the sensory characteristsics, product acceptability and perception of Australian Salmon from a consumer perspective. The attributes evaluated will include, but not be limited to, taste, texture, appearance, mouth feel portion size, etc. This information should relate to pricing and potential product forms that appeal to consumers. This will demonstrate if the species has the potential to be a sustainable, consumer commercial fishery. There is currently no consumer research information of this type available.

3. Show what attributes consumers value in seafood.

4. Understand the composition profiling, nutritional values and bio chemical factors that:

a) influence the spoiling of desirable characteristics;
b) influence the overall degradation of this particular species

This will fill gaps in the current research that is being undertaken.