Survey Shows Rise in Demand for Wild Alaska Pollock Products

An international marketing firm tracking product demand for the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) has found year-over-year survey results show a leap in Americans’ intent-to-purchase wild Alaska Pollock over the next 30 days.

Survey results presented by Ketchum Global this week during the fourth Wild Alaska Pollock annual meeting in Seattle on Oct. 17 said nearly seven million more consumers now know more about wild Alaska Pollock than a year ago.

Mary Elizabeth Germaine, head of analytics for marketing firm Ketchum Global, said the likelihood of purchasing and eating wild Alaska Pollock within the next 30 days is now 31%, closing the gap between wild Alaska Pollock and Pacific cod. The gap between wild Alaska Pollock and cod is now narrowed by 2%, she said.

This is the fourth year of GAPP’s year-over-year study, an online survey of a nationally representative sample of Americans to measure mass awareness and familiarity of Wild Alaska Pollock with consumers. “Even as we’re educating new people on Wild Alaska Pollock—perception of the fish overall is remaining incredibly positive,” she said.

Germaine and Ketchum Director of Analytics Lauren Hasse also spoke about the impact of inflation and the opportunity the current economic conditions present, particularly for surimi. Hasse told participants at the GAPP meeting that surimi has a new opportunity throughout this time of inflation to attract more consumers to eating Pollock.

“Inflation is bringing a slew of new consumers into the category that have never been there before,” Germaine said. “A lot of these consumers haven’t heard of wild Alaska Pollock or haven’t visited the frozen food aisle before and that’s a huge opportunity to connect to these new consumers and talk about the fish’s attributes.”

“[Influencer] content drove conversion in retail,” she explained. “When we look at all of the ways consumers can buy Wild Alaska pollock represented by many of the brands in this room, we saw those exposed to our content drove a sales lift that was 78% higher than those not exposed. We also saw an 18% sales lift for surimi, which is massive.”  

“We looked at our influencer audiences and we looked at the portion who bought Wild Alaska Pollock a year ago and compared that to those who purchased during the same period [this year],” Germaine said.

“We doubled the number of people for each influencer that were buying Wild Alaska Pollock fillets over last year. And then you see the same with surimi,” she added. “These results are exciting, and this is only phase one of this campaign just think what these will be six months from now.”