Analysis of marketing efficiency of processed sardine products of Lake Victoria: Case of Tanzania

Abstract

The paper tested the marketing efficiency of Lake Victoria processed sardines using structure-performance and efficient-structure hypotheses and the influence of socioeconomic characteristics on marketing efficiency. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaires from randomly selected 249 respondents. The conceptual framework showed the influence of market structure, performance and socioeconomic characteristics on marketing efficiency. Multiple regression and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the information. The Gini coefficients for traders and processors were 0.59 and 0.64; the Lorenz curves showed 80% of monthly income was accounted for by 50% of marketers indicating that the market was concentrated with high level of income and market shares inequalities. Empirical findings revealed that access to market information and formal business loans, selling price, net returns, and quantity traded significantly increase marketing efficiency. Marketing costs and margins significantly reduce marketing efficiency. Higher income and market share inequalities, poor access to business loans, markets and market information imply the market was imperfectly competitive and inefficient with greater likelihood of domination as economic and game theories suggests. The findings call for collective marketing in order to reduce marketing cost, increase the quantity traded and fishers’ bargaining power in order to increase their net returns.

Keywords:

• marketing
• sardines
• structure-performance
• structure-efficiency

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all the people and institutions that availed information that facilitated completion of this work. This work is part of the PhD thesis by J. J. Mkunda titled Characterizing Market Potentials and Developing Business Model for Lake Victoria Processed Sardine Products. We also thank DANIDA grant number DFC 14-P01-TAN, through the Innovation and Markets for Lake Victoria Fisheries (IMLAF) project to Sokoine University of Agriculture and the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology through which this work was undertaken and for funding the PhD studies for Josephine Mkunda.

ORCID

Josephine Joseph Mkunda http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1738-6515

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Danida Fellowship Centre: [Grant Number DFC 14-P01-TAN; under the Innovations and Markets for Lake Victoria Fisheries (IMLAF) Project.