Consumer demand for frozen seafood product categories in the United States

Frozen seafood marketing in grocery stores in the United States (U.S.) has undergone substantial transformation as a result of the introduction of value-added and convenience products into the category. However, it is not yet clear whether consumers perceive these value-added products to be substitutes for the traditional unbreaded products. We model the demand for frozen seafood in the United States using the linear approximate almost ideal demand system (LA-AIDS) employing market-level monthly retail scanner panel data. Our emphasis is on the demand relationships between the three aggregate frozen seafood categories, namely, breaded products, entrees and unbreaded products, and on the demand relationships for these categories when disaggregated as finfish and shellfish. We use fixed effects on the spatial and temporal variation in demand and incorporated demographic shifter variables. Our results show that unbreaded products, as compared to value-added categories of breaded seafood and seafood entrees, would gain market share if expenditure on frozen seafood increases. We also find that unbreaded products are stronger substitutes for value-added products than vice versa. We explore similar relationships between frozen shellfish and finfish products. Unbreaded shellfish can be expected to gain market share if expenditure on frozen seafood were to increase.