Value chains, business conventions, and market adaptation: A comparative analysis of Norwegian and Icelandic fish exports

Abstract

Business transactions’ value chains can constrain their capacity to maximize market value from limited resources. Seafood markets exhibit a strong demand for fresh, high‐quality seafood yet empirical studies show large variations in value chains’ adaptation and exploitation of market opportunities. This article presents a comprehensive model that identifies the main drivers and constraints in value chains for wild harvested seafood that generate differences in market adaptation. The model is built on theories of value chains, business conventions, competitive behaviour, governance conventions, legal regulation, and direct ecological and economic constraints. The model is applied in a comparative case analysis of market adaptation by value chains for North Atlantic cod products in Norway and Iceland, which explains why business conventions in Iceland are more consumer market adapted than those in Norway.

Regional segmentation of the salted codfish market in Spain: Implications for Norwegian producers

“…A third approach, closer to the goal of this article, stretches the scope and scrutinizes the dynamics of change along the value chain. Case studies of horticulture (Freidberg 2003), fair trade (Renard 2003), coffee (Ponte & Gibbon 2005), wine (Ponte 2009;Climent-López et al 2014), fish (Trondsen 2012;Larsen 2014;Larsen & Lindkvist 2014), and wine and fish compared (Sánchez-Hernández 2011) discuss the ability and propensity of primary producers and industrial processors to attach new conventions to food in order to comply with the new values and demands stemming from the consumer markets. The influence of regulation and governance in fostering or hampering communication between both ends of the value chain is a pervasive topic in these contributions.…”

Nordic-Iberian Cod Value Chains

“…The actors in the seafood value chains thus have to be engaged in continuous communication, controlling and reacting of opportunities, pressures, and threats in the factor and customer markets through intermediary social and regulatory networks and organizations (Trondsen 1985). This layer of organizations and networks thus indirectly binds the value chain transactions together.…”

“…. In other fields, like the denial for the processing companies to own fishing vessels and dispose of quotas, the Norwegian industry is forced to compete on unequal terms with industrial competitors from other countries (Trondsen 2012). A spatial or geographical perspective is also important within each unit of a value chain and between the different chain units.…”

Generating Generative Mechanisms

“…There is little opportunity for interaction, communication, or social relationships between the physically separated stations in the value chain, except for the 11 Lindkvist and Sá nchez 2008;Lindkvist 2010;Sá nchez-Herná ndez 2011;Trondsen 2012. 12 Trondsen 2012.…”

“…2010.77 Trondsen 2012.78 Xie and Myrland 2010.79 Sleipnes and Johansen 2012.80 Lindkvist forthcoming.81 Johanson and Vahlne 2003. …”