There is some disagreement as to the relative merit of the 

 two methods. When the shrimp are sold box veight, the shrimp plant 

 operator knows immediately what the value of a shipment is and can pay 

 the fisherman as soon as his catch is unloaded. The fisherman and shrimp 

 plant operator believe that the buyer stands to profit by buying box 

 weiglit, inasmuch as they feel that a box will bring more when closely 

 graded. For this reason, the seller prefers box weight only in cases 

 where the shrimp run somewhat smaller than the average within the grade 

 interval. From the seller's point of view, the choice is essentially 

 between the relative convenience of the box weight system and the 

 possibility of obtaining a slightly better price when selling pack- 

 out weight. 



Prices on the producing level of the industry may be quoted 

 either in pounds or by the barrel. In general, in the States of 

 Mississippi and Louisiana quotations on the barrel are more common, 

 while the pound is the accepted unit of measure elsewhere. The dis- 

 tinction is not a particularly important one, in that either unit may 

 be easily converted to the other. A barrel of shrimp weighs 125 pounds 

 on a "heads -off", or 210 pounds on a "whole" basis. 



Wholesale and Retail Operations — Introductory 



The marketing of shrimp products at the wholesaler's and re- 

 tailer's level was surveyed for the United States Fish and Wildlife 

 Service by the A. C. Nielsen Company. The survey consisted of question- 

 naire interviews of secondary wholesalers and retailers of shrimp prod- 

 ucts as well as an audit of retail sales and inventories and a merchan- 

 dising experiment made for the purpose of studying the sales of products 

 at retail under specially controlled marketing conditions. Itie great bulk 

 of shrimp products are marketed frozen. Since the practices used in marketing 

 such products are similar to those used for frozen foods generally, they 

 easily become a part of the marketing system for frozen foods. The next 

 two sections describe wholesale and retail operations of this system. 



Wholesale Operation 



Wholesalers receive their frozen products either by railroad 

 refrigerator car or by refrigerated truck from the warehouses of pro- 

 ducers or distributors. Some wholesalers pick up their frozen foods 

 with their own refrigerated trucks. Wholesalers who do not have their 

 own warehouses usually rent refrigerated rooms in a warehouse for use 

 as a working area in which frozen food orders can be assembled and dis- 

 patched. 



Frozen foods are wholesaled either on receipt of an order 

 at the plant or directly from the truck as outlets on a route are 

 visited. Orders are assembled for delivery accordingly. If the food 

 is sold in advance of delivery, each order is assembled as a separate 

 unit and dispatched by a regular delivery truck. If the frozen food 

 is sold from the truck as each retail store is visited, the truck 



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