458 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



not to have made as much progress in North Carolina as they have in some 

 other parts of the country, their effectiveness here is nevertheless appar- 

 ent. The sales effort and merchandising in North Carolina are typical of 

 chain store operations. Display is usually good. Seafood is mentioned at 

 least once a week in the store's newspaper advertisements. Many chain 

 stores are adding facilities for handling quick frozen packaged goods, whether 

 of the chain store's own brands or other brands. It is probably the chain 

 stores that are most instrumental in bringing into North Carolina the frozen 

 packaged goods, such as redfish, or "ocean perch," haddock fillets, pollock, 

 halibut, etc., from the New England States, and other fishes from Chesa- 

 peake Bay, Florida, Gulf of Mexico, and even the west coast. Standardized 

 packages of these products produced on a large scale greatly simplify the 

 chain store merchandising operations. 



In pricing, the chain stores are the only type of fish retailers in the State 

 to deal with mark-up in terms of per cent (usually 25) on selling price. 



These stores also conduct scientific merchandising studies of their terri- 

 tories. A recent example was a spot check made by the Southern Chain Store 

 Council of variety and drug stores in Raleigh and Charlotte which serve 

 meals. The data from such studies are used to guide the operating policies 

 of the chain stores in these cities. 



d. Institutions. Institutions such as college dining rooms, hospitals, prisons, 

 etc., are consumers rather than dealers. Most of their purchases are from 

 local wholesalers or from retailers of any of the three classes described 

 above. The one characteristic of the institutional trade is absolute insistence 

 on certainty of delivery at the specified times. Institutions buy almost in- 

 variably once a week and specify usually that the seafood be dressed or 

 prepared to be cooked on arrival. Standing orders for a certain quantity of 

 fish for each Friday are often placed, the variety of fish not designated but 

 left to the discretion or opportunity of the supplier. In some cases special 

 arrangements are made for frozen product in order to insure unfailing 

 delivery. 



Price Structure from Fisherman to Consumer. In lieu of a needed survey 

 of the price structure. Dr. Kirkpatrick constructed Table 36, which is 

 intended to represent typical prices at the various points in the distribution 

 system in October-November, 1946. 



Here, again, as in shipments to Fulton Market, the fisherman's share 

 of the final price is much less than the farmer's share for farm products. 

 Perhaps the two are not properly comparable in such simple terms. It is 

 not necessary to invoke any principle of right-and-wrong to decide whether 

 the first producer is "entitled" to a larger share of the final proceeds than 

 the "middle men"; the fact is, as everywhere evident in the fisheries, fish 



