Product merchandising plays a key role in influencing store sales and bigger customer baskets. When it comes to merchandising food products, such as seafood which has been in the spotlight over the past few months, correct positioning and in-store promotions are essential to keep up with the demand and to keep sales growing.

As customers continue to prioritize their health and wellness and become more conscious of what they eat, seafood remains on nearly every customer’s grocery list. This gives solid leverage for grocers wanting to take advantage of the opportunity by incentivizing them to strategize ways on how to improve their seafood merchandising activity.

Here is a simple yet practical guide to seafood merchandising that will help you boost your seafood sales:

Maximizing Seafood Packaging

Customers have become more educated these days regarding the impact of seafood on their personal health. They continuously seek more information on the seafood products they purchase. This is where packaging comes into play. Packaging of seafood products can be an effective avenue for grocers or brands to promote the health benefits of seafood, show where and how it was sourced, and provide the possible means for the inclusion of necessary labels and sometimes recipes.  As trends for sustainability and transparency remain strong, focused messaging on seafood packages does not just attract customers, but also serves as a crucial merchandising strategy.

Investing in the Right Lighting

Lighting affects the customers’ perception of quality and freshness. That’s why grocers should not discount the effects of proper lighting in their seafood merchandising efforts. Investing in LED lights to properly illuminate seafood in display cases promotes optimum product visibility through high color rendering and lighting uniformity. LED lights also improve and affect product integrity more than we know. Aside from optimizing the optics of your merchandise to more appealing visual heights, installing LED lights in reach-in and refrigerated display cases provides significant energy efficiency benefits and reduced operational costs for your store.

Curating Attractive Display

Whether merchandising on self-serve or service cases, creativity is the key to keeping your display attractive to your in-store grocery shoppers. Grocers can use stainless-steel pans with risers and dividers to keep seafood products clean and packed out in an orderly fashion. Also, to put a touch of fun and color to seafood merchandising, grocers should separate seafood selections in the display case by alternating fish species and using colorful fruits and fresh produce as a divider between each seafood product. This results in a decorative, eye-catching display that garners the customer’s attention.

Whether in-store or online, merchandising influences customers’ buying decisions. Most especially, when it comes to seafood products, the right product positioning paired with strategic and creative merchandising, will certainly go a long way towards improving those seafood sales numbers.