Quantitative Evaluation of Generic Promotion of Seafood in Norway.

The project intends to evaluate the economic effectiveness of the domestic generic advertising programme for seafood. The Norwegian Seafood Council (NSEC) initiated this advertising program in 1995. The goal will be to conduct evaluations for the period 1 999 – 2001. Over past two years, a dynamic econometric and simulation model developed by Cornell economists had been used to evaluate the economic effects of the US Fluid Milk Processors` and Dairy Producers` generic promotion programs at the national level. This ind ustry raises US $ 350 million annually which is invested in media advertising of milk and cheese. In the US this model has served a useful purpose to dairy farmers, policy makers, and promotion managers in empirically documenting the economic impacts of g eneric fluid milk and cheese advertising. The model has also been useful to program managers in crafting various advertising and promotion strategies aimed at increasing the demand for fluid milk and cheese products. The methodology that is proposed in this project builds upon, improves and adopts the previous mentioned US Dairy model in a way that should lead to more accurate estimates of the impacts of domestic promotion of seafood in addition to information that sh ould be useful to program managers in crafting promotion strategies to maximize returns to the seafood industry as a whole.